I.MIfWK
THE
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL
COMPLEX OF
THE
USA
B. Pyadyshev has written a number of works on the military-political aspects of US imperialist activity. Here he analyses the military-- industrial complex (MIC), the alliance of the largest monopolies and the military in the state apparatus.
He shows the class substance of the MIC and the conditions which have led to its emergence, and considers the structure, forms and methods of its activity and its role in the US economy, politics and ideology.
With the swing away from the cold war and towards detente, and the ever broader acceptance of the principles of peaceful coexistence, the MIC appears as the chief adversary of the new tendencies in international affairs. While it is forced to adapt to the realities and to modify its tactics, its substance and purposes have not changed: it has carried on its programme of expansion and arms race, which is having a negative impact on the country's economy and the condition of the US working people.
[BEGIN]B.PYADYSHEV
THE
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL
COMPLEX OF
THE
USA
MOSCOW
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
[3]Translated from the Russian by Yuri Sdubnikov
Designed by Vladimir Yurchikov
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__COPYRIGHT__ First printing 197711105--322 014(01)-77
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[4] CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION................ 7 CHAPTER ONE. THE MIC AND THE STATE 19 In Washington's ``Corridors of Power" ... 19 The Pentagon's Five Aspects ....... 36 Congressional ``Advice and Consent" .... 48 CHAPTER TWO. THE MIC AND THE ECONOMY . 56 The Pentagon and the Monopolies..... 56 Militarist Technocrats .......... 75 The Periphery of the Complex ...... 83 CHAPTER THREE. THE IDEOLOGY OF FORCE 89 Cold War Dogmas............ 89 The Pentagon's Propaganda Machine .... 101 ``Ossified Instrument" .......... 113 CHAPTER FOUR. THE MIC AND FOREIGN POLICY ...............'. . 124 Illusions of Empire............ 124 Collapse of the Messianic Conception .... 146 Militarism Adapts Itself.......... 159 CONCLUSION.................. 178 5 ~ [6] __ALPHA_LVL1__ INTRODUCTIONIn the historically inexorable and intense contest between the two world socio-political systems---socialism and capitalism---the advantages of the forces of socialism, peace and progress have been steadily growing ever more evident over the past few years. The Soviet Union's Leninist foreign policy has achieved tangible results; the USSR has consistently worked to develop constructive interstate relations on the basis of the principles of peaceful coexistence, while firmly rebuffing the aggressive manifestations in the policies of the imperialist powers, and working resolutely against militarism and bourgeois ideology, and for peace, and the freedom and security of the nations.
The Peace Programme adopted by the 24th Congress of the CPSU in 1971 proclaimed the Soviet Union's readiness to deepen relations of mutually advantageous co-operation in various fields with states also seeking to do so.
The 25th Congress of the CPSU, which was held in February 1976, put forward a programme of further struggle for peace and international co-operation, and for the freedom and independence of the peoples. It calls for work for the termination of the expanding arms race and for transition to reducing the accumulated stockpiles of armaments, to disarmament. It urges the peace-loving states to concentrate their efforts on eliminating the remaining seats of war. Everything must be done to deepen international detente, to work for ensuring Asian security and for a world treaty on the non-use of force in international relations. The Congress considered as crucial the international task of completely eliminating 7 all the vestiges of the system of colonial oppression, and emphasised the importance of eliminating discrimination in international trade. The Soviet Union will direct its foreign-policy efforts towards achieving these tasks and shall co-operate for that purpose with other peaceloving states.
The effective policy of peace being pursued by the Soviet Union in fraternal co-operation with other socialist countries has brought about essential positive changes in the international arena. Large-scale changes have been taking place on the continent of Europe, where two devastating world wars once originated. The conclusion of the treaties between the USSR and the FRG, and Poland and the FRG, which sealed the inviolability of the borders existing between the two German states--- GDR and FRG---the normalisation of the situation in West Berlin, the final breach of the diplomatic blockade of the GDR, and the fruitful development of diverse contacts between the USSR and France, the FRG, Italy and other Western countries---all these and other important events promote the fulfilment of the task of converting Europe, once an area of conflict and bloodshed, into a continent of peace and good-neighbourhood. The 25th Congress emphasised that ``the turn for the better in our relations with the United States of America, the biggest power of the capitalist world, has, of course, been decisive in reducing the danger of another world war and in consolidating peace. This has beyond question contributed to the improvement of the international climate in general, and that of Europe in particular."^^1^^ The Soviet Government has given very much attention to the task of improving relations with the United States.
In May 1972, the USSR and the USA signed in Moscow a document, the Basic Principles of Mutual Relations Between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America, which established the fundamental premises for the development of ties between the two states at the new stage. The package of concrete agreements signed in Moscow provided the foundation for normalising and developing mutually advantageous _-_-_
~^^1^^ 25th Congress of the CPSU. Documents and Resolutions, Moscow, 1976, p. 24.
8 ties in various fields. The Soviet-American agreements on limiting strategic arms were an important step in containing the arms race. In June 1973, the USSR and the United States signed a permanent agreement on the prevention of nuclear war. These key documents laid a solid political and legal foundation for developing mutually advantageous co-operation between the two countries on the principles of peaceful coexistence, and contribute to reducing the danger of nuclear war.Much historical importance attaches to the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, which was held in Helsinki in the summer of 1975 and was attended by 33 European stales, the USA and Canada. It put on record the results of all the positive achievements in the period of transition from the futile and harmful cold war policy to international detente and the practice of the principles of peaceful coexistence. In his speech at Helsinki, L. I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, emphasised that ``the powerful currents of detente and co-operation on the basis of equality, which in recent years have increasingly determined the course of European and world politics, will gain, thanks to the Conference and its results, new strength and greater scope".^^1^^ The understandings reached on the basis of consideration of the opinions and interests of all the participants in the Conference open up fresh opportunities for fulfilling the key task of our day, that of consolidating peace and the security of the nations.
Following these developments in Europe, there are now also fairly clear signs of a possible detente inAsia> where the past decades were marked by ceaseless wars. With profound satisfaction, peace-loving mankind welcomed the signing of the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam in January 1973. The year 1975 saw a victorious end to the long struggle of the peoples of Indochina against the colonialists and the US aggressors. One of the most dangerous hotbeds of war on the globe was eliminated. For long years, that war was used by the forces of aggression and reaction to aggravate international tensions and step up the arms _-_-_
~^^1^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Moscow, 1975, p. 579.
9 drive. It created a serious obstacle in the way of broad international co-operation. Its end opened up fresh opportunities for deepening the detente, and strengthening security and world peace.As a result of the Soviet Union's initiative, the principles of peaceful coexistence among states with different social systems are being ever more firmly established in international practice, and the line of developing cooperation and settling disputes by pacific means has been gaining the upper hand.
However, in the USA, as in other capitalist countries, apart from the forces urging peaceful coexistence with the USSR and other socialist' countries, active efforts have been made by influential circles seeking to continue the cold war against the socialist world, to maintain international tensions and keep the arms race going. These include the reactionary military in the West whose interests are closely geared to the expansionist aims and plans of those who run the big monopolies. In his speech at the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow, L. I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and head of the CPSU delegation, emphasised: ``The influence of the so-called military-industrial complex, i.e., the alliance of the largest monopolies with the military in the state apparatus, is growing rapidly in the most developed capitalist states. This sinister alliance is increasingly pressuring the policy of many imperialist countries, making it still more reactionary and aggressive."^^1^^
The forces of war and aggression, of which the militaryindustrial complex (MIC) is the core, are to be found in a number of Western countries, but they are most active in the United States, where they seek to bolster their position in the country's political, economic and ideological life. In the new conditions now taking shape in the world and under the normalisation of relations between the USSR and the USA, the opponents of peace and progress in the USA, and their forward echelon, the MIC, have to adjust'to the existing realities, modify the forms of their activity and tactics, and be more cautious in _-_-_
~^^1^^ International Meeting of Ccmmunist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, Prague, 1969, p. 143.
10 using methods which are frankly couched in the cold war spirit.Meanwhile, the essence, purposes and expectations of the alliance of the arms business and the generals have not changed, for it has carried on a programme of expansion, the arms drive, and attempts to impose on other nations the will of US monopoly capital. The MIC's political line has not been affected by the recent major changes in the policies pursued by the US leaders. Its influence on every aspect of US life may have been somewhat shaken as a result of the Soviet-American rapprochement, but remains very extensive.
That is why it is very important to analyse the MIC's activity in present-day conditions. A scientifically correct analysis, which is precise in class terms, of the correlation of various forces and tendencies in US political life and an evaluation of the present state and prospects facing US foreign policy, including Soviet-American relations, requires a thorough study of the activity and purposes of the MIC.
The MIC includes the major monopolies engaged in the mass production of the most modern types and systems of weapons. Many of these monopolies emerged in the postwar period and belong to the young groupings of capital. Monopoly capital, while remaining the true master of the United States, has been moving into the military field in the hope, on the one hand, of making maximum profits on the arms drive, and, on the other, of building up stocks of modern weapons and other instruments of force that would enable it to establish its overlordship of the other countries of the world.
The MIC also includes the elite of the US military. The interests of the financial oligarchy demanded the build-up of a large military caste, and the maintenance in peace-time of a multi-million army, numerous bridgeheads and bases, ballistic missiles, bombers and missile-carrying submarines designed to fill out with dangerous and explosive muscle a policy pursued from `` positions of strength.''
The US state machine, whose structure and functions are also largely oriented upon the needs of the ``positions of strength" policy, has also taken an active part in the MIC's activity. The strength and influence of the 11 government machine, the potentialities of the biggest monopolies, and the arsenals of the Pentagon are joined together in resisting the revolutionary changes in the world and in helping US imperialism to maintain its world positions. The monopolies and the military make up the core of the MIC of the United States. It is the pivot for a constellation of forces and groupings variously tied in with the MIC, but invariably catering for its interests and helping to make it more efficient. US military analyst James A. Donovan says in his book, Militarism, USA, that the MIC is a conjunction of the immense defence establishment and the vast permanent arms industry. There is an additional complex of related interests which include reserves, veterans, scientists, university research centres, congressmen, local businesses, labour, professional publications, and even news media.
The term ``military-industrial complex" was first used by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell speech on January 17, 1961, when he said: ``This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence---economic, political, even spiritual---is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal Government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.... In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex.''
While the statement by the late US President does remark on the rapid growth of militarism, and its attendant dangers, he clearly takes a limited class approach of the bourgeois leader in assessing and analysing this ``new'' phenomenon in the American experience. He does not regard the accelerated conjunction of the immense military establishment and the vast arms industry as something organic to the socio-economic system of capitalism which rules the USA. He and many other bourgeois authorities regard the MIC as something that can be eliminated or subjected to strict control by US society.
From this angle, the question of the MIC has been extensively discussed in US political writings, political speeches and public circles. Many US writers have given 12 graphic descriptions of the dangers attendant upon the rapid growth of and penetration by the military of US politics, ideology and the economy. That is the approach taken, among others, by James A. Donovan in the abovementioned book. All of them seek, to the best of their abilities, to analyse the role of the military in various fields of US life, and their books are of interest because they contain an array of facts, exposing the machinations and the unsavory activity of the ``brass hats" and the arms manufacturers.
A number of prominent political leaders have urged a deeper analysis of the problem. Their critical examination of the doctrines and practices of the military has produced proposals aimed to safeguard bourgeois democracies from the incursion of the MIC, which they believe to be excessive. That was the purpose, for instance, of Senator William Proxmire in his Report from Wasteland. America's Military Industry Complex, J. W. Fulbright in his book, The Pentagon Propaganda Machine, and J. K. Galbraith in an article carried by Harper's Magazine in June 1969, which he entitled ``How to Control the Military''. Special mention should be made of the book published in 1971 by one-time US Assistant Secretary of Defense Adam Yarmolinsky called The Military Establishment. Its Impact on American Society, which is perhaps the most circumstantial analysis of the MIC in US literature.
These publications are evidence above all of the profound concern among the broadest political and public circles in the USA over the unprecedented growth of militarism. But most of the critics among the bourgeois writers tend to take a limited class view of the problem.
A truly scientific explanation of the nature of the MIC can be given only on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism, and Lenin's analysis of militarism, its purposes and the mechanism of its influence on the domestic and foreign policy of capitalist society. A profound and comprehensive characteristic of the MIC is contained in the decisions and materials of the CPSU congresses and documents of the present-day international communist movement. The 1971 Programme of the Communist Party U.S.A. contains a circumstantial 13 analysis of this new phenomenon in the development of US imperialism.
Soviet researchers have made a profound analysis of various aspects of the MIC's activity in the economic, political and military fields.^^1^^ These studies show the class origins and social roots of the alliance of the US military and industrial capital, and point to the dangers which this bloc has in store for the cause of peace and progress, so suggesting the conclusion that the only way to eradicate militarism and get rid of the MIC monster is to abolish the imperialist system of oppression.
The MIC is not a grouping, however powerful, of private businessmen working for their own interests. It is a manifestation of capitalism's nature. The alliance of private business and the top US military took shape iri the concrete conditions of the postwar stage in the development of^ US imperialism. The most important of these conditions are the following:~
the programme for world domination proclaimed by US monopoly capital after the Second World War, which have led to militarisation, an arms drive and subordination of every aspect of US life to the ``positions of strength" policy, all of which are unparalleled in the history of the United States;~
the scientific and technical revolution going forward over the past quarter-century, which has largely transformed the whole of military production, promoting the emergence of new groupings of monopoly capital, and establishment of new industries with large-scale investments and working mainly for the needs of war;~
the growing coalescence within US capitalism of the ties, interests and purposes of Big Business magnates and government leaders in the field of military policy and arms manufacture, which have resulted in an extension of the real power of the US Department of Defense _-_-_
~^^1^^ See G. Arbatov, The War of Ideas in Contemporary International Relations, Moscow, 1973; V. Kulakov, The Ideology of Aggression, Moscow, 1970; Y. Melnikov, US Foreign Policy Doctrines, Moscow, 1970; International Conflicts, Moscow, 1972; A. Migolatyev, Escalation of Militarism, Moscow, 1970; USA: Domestic Policy Problems, Moscow, 1971; Y. V. Katasonov, USA: Planning in the Pentagon. Methods of Elaborating Military Programmes and Bugdets, Moscow, 1972; The Secrets of the US Secret Services, Moscow, 1973 (all in Russian except Arbatov's book).
14 in deciding on the lines and nature of US economic development.On the crest of these three main factors, and as a result of a combination of all the features characteristic of the present stage in the development of US imperialism, there has arisen an alliance of the biggest monopolies and the military, a new phenomenon in US life: the military-industrial complex of the United States. Its formation has undoubtedly been influenced by the specific development of the United States in the past, and the historical and military traditions of this power, which ushered in the epoch of imperialist wars for a redivision of the world. In the course of the USA's two centuries, the US ruling class started 130 wars of aggrandisement, while weapons have been among the leading instruments of US policy, although, as the Marxist-Leninist classics noted, the USA had once differed from the leading European powers by having a relatively less developed military and military-bureaucratic machine.
The USA's entry upon the stage of imperialism resulted in a steep rise of militarism. In 1917j V. I. Lenin wrote that the United States ``...have completely sunk into the all-European filthy, bloody morass of bureaucratic-military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves, and suppress everything... ."^^1^^ From the past, US militarism inherited avidity, a readiness brutally and brazenly to meddle in the affairs of other nations and, at the same time, a sanctimonious pretence to ;the historical traditions of democracy and liberty, by means of which the US imperialists have sought to cover up the reactionary substance of their policy.
To US imperialism fully applies Lenin's characteristic of militarism, which operates ``...as a military force used by the capitalist states in their external conflicts ... and as a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes for suppressing every kind of movement, economic and political, of the proletariat..."^^2^^ Let us note, however, that before the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, ``The State and Revolution'', Vol. 25, pp. 420--21.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, ``Bellicose Militarism'', Vol. 15, p. 192.
15 the growth and activity of militarism---in its outward form---were mostly a reflection of the imperialist struggles to redivide the world and establish spheres of influence; today, in this epoch of the two opposite world social systems, the purposes of militarism tend substantially to change. They are now aimed above all at struggle against the Soviet Union, the vanguard of the forces of social progress, and against the whole world socialist system.From stage to stage in the US ``positions of strength" policy, the material and political potentialities of the bloc of the military and the arms manufacturers have increased, its role in the US government has grown, and its military-political doctrines have presented an ever greater danger to the cause of peace. Formulating the foreign-policy projects and schemes in the early postwar years, the MIC looked to the establishment of US world domination. This marked the start of the stage in US politics, which continued until the late 1950s (the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations), of establishing an ``American Empire'', and expansion of US spheres of influence by means of political, military and economic methods. The arms race was started. In the mid-1950s, together with the traditional supplies of arms, within the Morgan, Du Pont and Rockefeller's groupings, new and powerful associations, controlling the manufacture of aerospace weapons, nuclear warheads, electronics, and so on, entered the arms business. That is when the emergence of the MIC in the USA was first noted.
In the late 1950s, under the impact of the important changes in favour of the forces of peace and socialism, the positions of imperialism in the world arena were weakened. This was caused, first, by the important changes in the correlation of forces in favour of socialism owing to the growth of the economic and military might of the USSR and all the other countries of the socialist community, and second, by the successes of the national liberation movement which led to the collapse of the colonial systems, intensified the working people's class struggles in the capitalist countries against their exploiters, and for democracy and peace. US strategists were forced to reckon with this, and to adapt themselves to the new situation in the world.
16Under the aggravated general crisis of imperialism, the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations were faced with the task of retaining the positions and scope of the US influence in the world secured in the preceding period.
One of the ways which military analysts proposed to US political leaders for solving the problem was the so-called doctrine of ``limited wars'', which, they claimed, could render US military policy an invaluable service by enabling the country to influence events, instead of merely recording them.
However, this did not imply that the plans for US world leadership were being put aside. There was an active search in US ruling circles for ``national goals" and stimuli that would breathe energy into the American nation and mobilise the people of the United States to continue the drive for the increasingly illusory global plans of monopoly capital. There came the political doctrines of the ``new frontiers" and then of the ``great society'', and strategic conceptions designed to maintain the USA's `` superiority" and make more rational use of its political, economic and military potential. Appropriations for the arms race were increased.
In the subsequent period, there was fresh evidence that the basis of imperialist policy had been seriously eroded. In the early 1970s, for the first time since the Second World War, the USA was faced with the need to cut back on its military-political commitments and to release resources for tackling its own socio-economic problems and internal contradictions, which had been sharply aggravated by the foreign-policy crisis. Washington's primary concern was to reduce the risk of direct US involvement in armed conflicts in various parts of the globe, especially those latent with a clash with the Soviet Union.
Today, the influence of the militarist wing on US foreign policy is not boundless. It would be wrong to equate the political orientations of the Administration and those of the MIC magnates. The latter's line is aimed to safeguard the interests of an influential section of the US bourgeoisie, but not the whole of it. The US government has to take account of the requirements of capitalist society as a whole, which now and again are not identical with those of the MIC, whose line differs and __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---01462 17 frequently clashes with the programme of that section of US political and social circles who demanded an end to the war in Vietnam, call for an end to the arms race and dangerous extremes Jin US foreign policy, and advocate the development of Soviet-American relations on the basis of the principles of peaceful coexistence.
At the same time, among the forces shaping US policy, the MIC continues to be one of the most powerful, having few rivals in comprehensive and effective influence on the state of affairs in the country. Its practical action has ceased to be a purely internal US problem, for it has gone beyond the US domestic framework to become a factor of world politics. The MIC carries a large share of the responsibility for the maintenance of tensions, hotbeds of dangerous conflicts and outstanding international problems in the world. The conclusion drawn by the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties---``the basic interests of the peoples demand the intensification of the struggle against militarism in all its forms, particularly against the military-industrial complex of the USA and other imperialist states"^^1^^--- remains meaningful even today.
_-_-_~^^1^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, p. 32.
[18] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter One __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE MIC AND THE STATE __ALPHA_LVL2__ In Washington's ``Corridors of Power''The present-day bourgeois state, the structure, purposes and mode of action by the Executive and the Legislature, and the activity of government agencies fully bear out Lenin's conclusion about the inevitable further concentration of real power under the control of a handful of financial magnates, deprivation of masses of people of their elementary rights, and emasculation of the Constitution. Today the USA's state machine, from the White House and the Congress down to the administrative agencies of the individual states, have the functions of protecting the privileges of the propertied minority, and subordinating politics, economics and ideology to the purposes of the domestic and foreign policy pursued by US monopoly capital.
Political power tends increasingly to be concentrated in Washington. The US Administration has been establishing control over every aspect of US life, a process which is being accelerated by the laws governing the development of state-monopoly capitalism. This process has been most pronounced under the Republican Administrations since 1968, although their leaders have repeatedly emphasised their adherence to ``free enterprise''. The Republican Administration has interfered in the economic sphere, dictating the rules for political and economic activity of individual states, stringently laying down the line for the development of the ideological climate in the country, and exercising full power in the sphere of foreign policy.
The rise of militarism in the United States and the emergence of its MIC have brought about a situation in which the interests of Big Business and the military elite, __PRINTERS_P_20_COMMENT__ 2* 19 so-called ``military considerations'', have become permanent and important reference points, which the US government has to reckon with. In the Administration itself there are those who support the notorious foreign policy pursued from ``positions of strength'', which is chiefly advocated by thej MIC, seeking to influence the formulation of US foreign^ policy.
The US Administration has always been a committee for managing the affairs of big capital.; It is the leading financiers and industrial magnates j or their direct representativeSj that j have constantly held ministerial^ and other high posts in Washington. However/ in the past /^quarter-century kthe interests of that section of Capital which is connected with the arms drive have been ever more prominently represented in the US Administration. More and more businessmen from the aerospace, electronics and othei industries working under Pentagon contracts have filled leading posts in the government machine. In addition, the number of generals and army officers holding government posts and their influence on the overall atmosphere in Washington's ``corridors of power" and the process of political decision-making in various echelons of the government machine have grown to unprecedented proportions. ``For the first time in its history, the US elite definitely includes 'among its executives and politicians and lawyers the warlords of Washington."^^1^^
Presidency is the central ^element of the system of state policy-making in the United States. The US President has tremendous powers, being authorised to decide on the ways and means of conducting the domestic and foreign-policy line of the ruling class. That is why when considering the question of how US policy is made, the first thing to clarify is this question: which social and political groupings have priority access to the President and opportunities for shaping his attitudes and decisions. Here it is also appropriate to identify the forces exerting an influence on the operation of the higher government agencies, especially those dealing with foreign policy.
_-_-_~^^1^^ C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three, New York, 1958, p. 53.
20One such grouping in the United States today is the MIC, which has been steadily operating as a factor of power and displaying considerable independence in US politics. Although all of its activity runs within the overall^ coursed of monopoly capital, its leaders are on the very right wing of the political spectrum. That is the logical result of the policy pursued by US ruling circles over the preceding period in their efforts to secure their aims in the world by relying on weapons, brute pressure, dictates and escalation of aggression.
__FIX__ Many fine lines picked up as text.The US ruling class managed to switch the government machine and US policy to the lines of militarism in the recent past without 'any special domestic complications. In the postwar atmosphere of anti-Sovietism, the cult of force and calls 'for expansion, the opposition to incursions by the military into the sphere of politics was virtually neutralised. Any reminder of the earlier antimilitarist traditions was regarded not just as unpatriotic, but actually verging on treason. Those who tried to protest against the aggressive policy of US ruling circles and to sound warnings about the dangers of militarising the economy faced harassment and severe reprisals.
``^The notorious law on ``loyalty checks" for government officials was"'enacted in* March 1947.r House Committee was set up in Washington and in other cities---hundreds of committees to' investigate ``un-American activities''. Over a million Americans were subjected to demeaning interrogations, while many were fiercely punished for coming out against the country's militarisation. As a result, for something like 15 years---until the end of the 1950s---there was virtually no broad public campaign in the United'States^'against the menace posed by the military-industrial complex.
In the US government machine, generals filled many leading posts, while official Washington circles claimed that this held no danger for the country's democratic institutions.'' The US army officer was presented as a champion of democracy and an opponent of totalitarianism. In order to win public sympathy for the unpopular ``positions of strength" policy, extensive use was made of the prestige of Second World War commanders like Eisenhower, Marshall and MacArthur, who were all 21 depicted by official propaganda as champions of democracy in the face of a ``communist menace".
The remodelling of the Administration in the early postwar years carried the MIC into the key lines in US politics. At the time, US ruling circles claimed that all the activity of the military would be placed under strict ``control'' by civilians appointed to leading posts in the Pentagon. Actually, in the quarter-century this ``civilian control" has never been and could not have been effective. The demagogic noises over the issue were designed to mislead public opinion concerning the tme proportions of the threat of militarism in the United States.
One of the hackneyed arguments in this propaganda campaign runs as follows: the senior US commanders--- the chiefs of staff of the three services of the US Armed Forces, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff---are fettered in their activity by the civilian chiefs in the Defense Department. But who are these civilians who have been appointed to ``control'' the generals? They turn out to be arms industry magnates working under Pentagon contracts and making fortunes on the arms drive.
Consider the top civilian leaders in the Pentagon under the Eisenhower Administration. The 1953 Defense Department was an eloquent illustration of the practical conjunction of the ``immense defense establishment and the vast permanent arms industry''. Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson had been president of General Motors, which is not only the world's leading automobile maker, but 'also one of the Pentagon's major contractors. Roger M. Kyes, a vice-president of General Motors, was Deputy Secretary. Robert T. Stevens, President of Stevens & Co., a leading supplier of military uniforms, was appointed Secretary of the Army. Harold E. Talbott, a member of the board of three corporations working for the Defense Department, became Secretary of the Air Force. Robert B. Anderson, financier and oil tycoon, became Secretary of the Navy, and later Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The US war machine is run by career military men or men from the arms business. On all major political issues, every US Secretary of Defense has acted hand-- inglove with the chiefs of staff. They have never had---and could never have had---any differences on measures to 22 extend military preparations, secure larger appropriations for the needs of war, and condition the population in a militaristic spirit. From the outset, the idea of filling a number of key posts in the Defense Department with civilians, advertised as a measure designed to prevent the chiefs of staff from exerting an excessive influence, became a factor promoting the origination and growth of the MIC, establishment of stronger ties between private business and the brass hats, and the MIC's growing sway.
At the present stage, with the advance of the scientific and technical revolution, another argument has been circulated in the United States in order to obscure the dangers attendant on the military's incursion into government affairs. In the present conditions, the US military, the argument runs, have to deal with problems in research, development and management which are similar to those in the civilian industries, and this helps to shape a ``new type" of officer who differs little, if at all, from the civilian official. One-time Assistant Defense Secretary Adam Yarmolinsky made this highly characteristic forecast: ``They are likely in the future to resemble the civilian organization man more than the distinctive and traditional member of the military establishment."^^1^^ Such assertions serve as camouflage for militaristic activity and the invasion of the sphere of politics by military men.
Initially, the incursion of MIC men into the US government machine resulted from the momentum of the war, when every aspect of politics had to be geared to its pursuit. Soon the process became permanent. The generals and the arms business leaders collaborating with them filled key posts in Washington and in US missions abroad, ousting those who were not connected directly with the arms drive.
The paramount importance of ``military considerations" in US politics was constitutionally entrenched by Harry S. Truinan in the 1947 National Security Act, under which the National Security Council (NSC), the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency were set up. The traditional forms of foreign-policy leadership, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, The Military Establishment. Its Impacts on American Society, New York, 1971, p. 70.
23 with which the USA emerged in the postwar world, fell short of the demands of the vast expansionist programme put forward by US financial circles. The important changes in the administration of foreign-policy affairs in that period were designed to set up a supreme mechanism to coordinate the activity of the various departments for the purposes of the ``positions of strength" policy.Throughout the whole of the preceding period of US history there had never been a single centre to run foreign and military policy, or a single system for administering the armed forces. Even during the Second World War, when the struggle against fascism required the utmost intensity, precision and smoothness of action, the US military-political machinery had not been duly adjusted. Now, such a centre of leadership was being set up. The 1947 reorganisation meant that US ruling circles were gearing their military-political machine for active use in the postwar world. Armed strength was becoming one of the leading instruments of struggle to realisr the foreign-policy programme of the US ruling class.
The supreme'jmechanism for foreign and military policy leadership, with the National Security Council at the head, as set up by the Truman Administration, exists to this day. At the various stages, it was reorganised, changes were made, and the role of the National Security Council now and again substantially reduced, but on the whole this mechanism has always dutifully catered for the MIC's interests and expectations. With the installation of a Republican Administration in the White House in 1968, special emphasis was laid on the role and importance of the National Security Council and the other military-political agencies set up under the 1947 National Security Act.
The National Security Council consists of the President of the USA (chairman), the Vice-President, the Secretary of State,' the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness. Until 1949, the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force were members of the National Security Council, which also included the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness. The Secretary of the Treasury was an ex-officio member of the National Security Council. Other members of the 24 Council were the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, and the Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency were invited to attend meetings of the Council as observers. The intention was also to invite the Attorney-General, the Director of the US Information Agency and the Chairman of the Economic Advisers Committee to attend meetings of the Council.
The Council's functions are: to ``advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the military services and other departments and agencies of the government to co-operate more effectively in matters involving the national security...''; to ``assess and appraise the objectives, commitments and risks of the United States in relation to our actual and potential military power, in the interests of national security, for the purpose of making recommendations to the President in connection therewith and ... to consider policies on matters of common interest to the departments and agencies of the government concerned with national security and to make recommendations in connection therewith".^^1^^
The military have a most active role to play in discussing and taking decisions of these matters. They act as the arbiters of the decisions adopted by the Council. Many NSC resolutions enter into force only after their approval by the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Military men make up the largest group of those regularly attending NSC meetings, although'only the Secretary of Defense is officially a full-fledged member of the Council. The Council very rarely discusses any matters without the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also of the chiefs of staff of three services of the US Armed Forces. At every meeting, members of the Council hear reports by the CIA Director and surveys of the international situation presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This enables the Defense Department chiefs to'influence the course _-_-_
~^^1^^ Timothy W. Stanley, American Defense and National Security, Washington, 1956, p. 28.
25 of the discussion. The military hold important posts in the working agencies of the NSC dealing with the preparation of problems for discussion at Council meetings and control of fulfilment of adopted decisions.The MIC's role and position are just as great at the lower echelons of the US government machine: in the departments, interdepartmental agencies, and various federal offices. The military have firmly established themselves among the US ruling elite since the early postwar years, and became active participants in the process of political decision-making at every level. They have always exerted an especially marked influence on the activity of departments dealing with foreign-policy and military problems. The US ruling class has always willingly employed generals and officers, regarding them as zealous executives of its plans.
After the Second World War, the generals found themselves in control of foreign policy in various parts of the world, like the US occupation zone in Germany. General Lucius D. Clay, who headed the US military administration in Germany, had virtually no relations with diplomatic representatives and had no intention of establishing any contacts with the US State Department for joint formulation of policy in Germany. General Douglas MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief of the US forces in Japan, also donned the mantle of politician.
There were considerable numbers of military men in the State and other departments dealing with foreign policy matters. The switch by US ruling circles to their ``global strategy" made the tasks before US foreign policy more complex, its components now consisted of military measures, the knocking together of aggressive blocs, the establishment of puppet regimes and armies in countries which had become dependent on Washington, economic activity, and so on.
The State Department was no longer able to deal with every aspect of foreign-policy activity and so many of its functions were being transferred to other departments, the Pentagon in the first place. The group of government experts, brought together in 1951 to study the problem of directing US foreign policy, submitted a report 26 containing the following data: as of September 30, 1950, some 43 governmental departments and other agencies engaged in overseas activities employed a total of 74,879 civilian personnel, of whom 51,204 were in the service of the Defense Department. The US analyst Alfred Vagts wrote: ``The increase in the number of agencies having to do with the administration of foreign business has been unprecedented. With military and other personnel vastly outnumbering diplomatic personnel, old-style diplomatic control no longer seems feasible..."^^1^^
In 1947, General of the Army George C. Marshall was appointed US Secretary of State, and later became US Defense Secretary. The US publicist Rexford G. Tugwell noted that ``When General Marshall had succeeded Mr. Byrnes, this group (the military-financial junta---B. P.) had moved confidently into control and had begun to make and practise the dangerously aggressive' policy which had shown itself first in the Truman Doctrine."^^2^^ Of the 20 leading posts in the State Department in that period, one-half was filled by the military.
In the early postwar period came a spate of appointments of military men to diplomatic posts abroad. In 1946, Lt.-Gen. Walter B. Smith was appointed US Ambassador to the USSR. He later became Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and within three years a Deputy Secretary of State. Brigadier General Henry A. Byroade, who had been in charge of German affairs at'the US State Department for many years, was appointed US Ambassador to Egypt. Among other Pentagon representatives seconded under President Truman for direct administration'of US foreign policy were a number of generals and admirals who were appointed to ambassadorships in Paraguay, Panama and various other countries.
The diplomats, who as a group could not vie with the military in numbers, discipline and identity of views and interests, were not as capable of putting through measures in the spirit of the ``positions of strength" _-_-_
~^^1^^ Alfred Vagts, Defense and Diplomacy. The Soldier and the Conflict of Foreign Relations, New York, 1956, p. 475.
~^^2^^ Rexford G. Tugwell, A Chronicle of Jeopardy. 1945--55, Chicago, 1955, pp. 88--89,
27 policy. Besides, the US military, extremely reactionary and conditioned to carry out orders, were capable of going much farther in foreign-policy gambles than civilian officials. That is why the appointment of military men to diplomatic posts was not a mere substitution of civil servants. The switch from uniform to tail-coat did nothing to change the frame of mind, which the erstwhile generals carried over into the sphere of diplomacj^'and international relations.With the start of the war in Korea, the role of'the MIC became even more obvious. The inner circle in which President Truman discussed not only plans for military operations but also foreign-policy problems consisted of General Omar N. Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chiefs of staff of the armed services and several men from the big corporations producing for the war. This period was marked by overt attempts by the US military to establish, with the support of the most reactionary circles of monopoly capital, uncontrolled positions in military and political affairs. The claims of the military were so incontinent that even President Truman was forced into a conflict with the most extremist group in the Pentagon, which was headed by Mac Arthur, in order to keep the military within bounds.
''
General MacArthur, who was in command of the US forces in the Far East during the Korean War, deliberately ignored orders from the Truman Administration on various occasions, claiming that the civilian leaders were fettering the military leaders' initiative. The fact that MacArthur was sacked in 1951 did not mean that the generals had been defeated, or that their positions in US policy had been weakened. On the contrary, the military started a loud campaign across the country to celebrate MacArthur as a ``national hero''. ``Hearings'' went on in the Congress for two months to demonstrate the prevailing power of the military. Ultimately, the Congress supported the President's decision to retire MacArthur. This reaffirmed the US President's sovereign leadership in matters of national policy, but the decisive role here was again played by the military themselves. US analysts note that Truman managed to secure a positive decision from the Congress only after he had won over to his side Defense Secretary Marshall, General 28 Omar Bradley and the chiefs of staff, who all supported the President in the conflict with MacArthur.^^1^^
As a result of the 1952 presidential election, General Eisenhower was installed at the White House as the 19th US military man to become US President. His behaviour was greatly influenced by the ``strong personalities" in his entourage, above all, the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to whom the President had virtually farmed out foreign-policy affairs. Eisenhower lent an attentive ear to his close friends, most of whom were financiers. The ``secret war" against the Soviet Union and the socialist countries was directed by Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA, who frequently failed to notify the US President of various intelligence operations.
Still, Eisenhower most frequently resorted to the services and advice of the MIC leaders. A prominent member of the Eisenhower Administration was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, who had a leading say in the formulation of foreign policy decisions (next to Secretary of State Dulles). According to the progressive US scientist, Victor Perlo, ten years after the war there were as many military men as politicians filling political posts in the US Administration. Over 6,000 officers, including about 200 generals and admirals, held civilian posts in various Washington departments and agencies. The Pentagon's men held many key posts at the White House. US Army Maj.-Gen. Wilton B. Persons became Deputy Assistant to the President, while the equally responsible post ofj Administrative Secretary at the White House was held by General Andrew J. Goodpaster, who subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of the NATO Armed Forces.
The General-turned-President was quite at home with the procedure established by his predecessors for the conduct of government business within the framework of the National Security Council, which focussed US policy on military-political programmes and appointed military men as the chief presidential aides. The Eisenhower Administration ushered in a ``golden age" for the NSC, which met once a week to consider the key foreign and _-_-_
~^^1^^ John W. Spanier, The Truman-Mac Arthur Controversy and the Korean War, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959.
29 domestic problems. The role of the Cabinet was markedly reduced, for it no longer dealt with[any important' political problems] and had to confine itself to minor issues.The relationship between the Administration and the MIC, which had taken shape by the early 1960s, faced a kind of test with the installation at the White House in 1960 of John F. Kennedy, the leader of the Democrats.
Kennedy's ``new frontiers" policy clearly revealed an urge to step up the fight against the ideas of communism and national liberation, and to fortify the global positions of US imperialism. But the new President also differed from his predecessors on the nature of US activity in the international arena and, in particular, on US relations with the Soviet Union.
Kennedy took account of the numerous failures of the aggressive US policy and intended to conduct government business with greater emphasis on political decisions, and allowing criticism of the excessive role of the military in US policy in the preceding period.^^1^^ This evoked sharp discontent among the most reactionary and militaristic circles of the USA. The conservative leadership of many departments, the Defense Department in the first place, was wary of some of Kennedy's ideas, which appeared to be too bold. The top brass hats and top bureaucrats had no intention of taking the initiative in elaborating the ideas coming from the White House, and now and again quietly sabotaged their realisation.
In these conditions, Kennedy introduced a new scheme for the administration of government affairs. The central element was now a group of close associates, most of them civilians, making up the so-called brains trust, which was charged with formulating and implementing the key policy decisions. There was a sharp reduction in the role of the National Security Council, which no longer met regularly.
At the outset of his political activity, Kennedy realised that even the President found it hard to counter the MIC leaders' uncontrolled acts. He had just taken over, when he found himself drawn into a militaristic tide from which he could not escape: in April 1961, US _-_-_
~^^1^^ Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy, New York, 1965, pp. 326--46, 726--29.
30 military circles, in effect, imposed on him their plans for the invasion of Cuba, although he did not quite agree with them.When in November 1960 Kennedy first learned of the CIA's and the Pentagon's preparations for an attack on revolutionary Cuba, he had doubts about the need to adopt a project worked out by the military and intelligence leaders of the Eisenhower Administration. Within a few days of his official installation as President, Kennedy called the first conference to discuss the invasion plan. After the conference, on March 29, 1961, Presidential Adviser Arthur Schlesinger wrote in his diary: ``The final decision will have to be made on April 4. I have the impression that the tide is flowing^against the project."^^1^^
The military and intelligence leaders redoubled their efforts to get the White House to approve the invasion plan. Initially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff emphasised that the ultimate success of the operation would depend on two factors: a large-scale anti-communist uprising in Cuba, or heavy military support of the counter-- revolutionaries from outside. The Pentagon generals claimed that there were good chances for ultimate success. In any case, the men of the Pentagon said, if the invasion proved to be a failure and the invaders were defeated on the shore, they could easily ``fade out" into the mountains and continue armed operations against the Castro Government.
The voices of the few sober-minded leaders, who warned of the dangerous consequences of the Cuba gamble, were drowned out by the militaristic campaign, which was being hotted up by the MIC leaders. Chester Bowles, Acting Secretary of State, learned in late March of the planned intervention, and sent in a memorandum objecting to any aggressive acts in the Caribbean. This document did not reach President Kennedy. At the same time, a message was sent to President Kennedy by Senator J. William Fulbright, who objected to the armed intervention and insisted on pursuing a policy of ``containment'' with respect to Cuba. However, by then the President had succumbed to the generals' pressure, and the April 4 _-_-_
~^^1^^ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days, John F. Kennedy in the White House, Boston, 1965, p. 249.
31 conference took a decision to attack revolutionary Cuba.Following the ignominious fiasco of the US intervention at Playa Jiron (the Bay of Pigs), Kennedy repeatedly spoke of the influence of the military on US policy. There is no doubt that President Kennedy and his associates put the struggle against revolutionary Cuba high on their list of foreign-policy priorities, but the President differed with the military who had worked out the Cuba invasion plan on the methods to be used in the struggle. The US President had failed to have his methods used on the Cuban issue, for he was forced to accept the plan of the Defense Department and the CIA. In his capacity as the Chief Executive, President Kennedy bore full political responsibility for the Playa Jiron adventure, but as Kennedy himself said, he had, in effect, put the blame on the CIA and the Pentagon.
The preparation and the failure of the aggression against Cuba showed once again that the most aggressive circles were firmly in control of US policy, and ,that even the President had to reckon with their will. After Playa Jiron, Kennedy stepped up the reorganisation of the foreign-policy machinery, concentrating the conduct of government affairs with the ``brains trust'', and reducing the importance of the NSC. Allen Dulles resigned, and various other adherents of the old approach to international affairs were dismissed from their posts. Relations between the President and the top career military remained fairly cool. Thus, he made a point of insisting that all the documents of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should reach the White House only after scrutiny by the Pentagon's civilian leadership.
Throughout his term, Kennedy faced serious difficulties in his relations with the MIC. The resistance from the ``right'' was especially intensified in the second half of 1963, when the ``new frontiers" policy began to yield some positive results in relations with the Soviet Union, disarmament and other areas. Thus, during the 1963 Senate debate of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the US President spent almost as much effort in overcoming the resistance of the military leaders, as in the negotiations with Moscow.^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., op. cit., pp. 911--13.
32During President Kennedy's 1,036 days, there were, however, no crisis situations within the framework of the ``state---MIC'' system similar to the sharp clashes between the Truman Administration and the extremist generals in 1951. The President and the Pentagon saw eye to eye on the main political issues, and the MIC's positions in US politics were further consolidated in that period.
The five years of the Democratic Administration headed by Lyndon B. Johnson provided fresh evidence of the MIC's steadily growing influence within the mechanism of state policy, regardless of the President's personal character, views or,innovations.
A characteristic feature of Johnson's style of leadership was that he usually took many key decisions after consultations with a handful of persons, and sometimes without any preliminary discussion at all. This circle of persons was confined to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Clarke Clifford, Johnson's personal aide at the White House Walt Rostow and one or two other intimates.
In his five years, Johnson^changed virtually all of the Secretaries, while 13 special aides left the White House, including prominent ``new frontiers" men like Pierre Salinger, Arthur Schlesinger, Me George Bundy, Theodore C. Sorensen, and Jerome B. Wiesner. Only the advocates of the tough aggressive line in international affairs, the ``hawks'', urging an extension of the aggression in Vietnam and continuation of the ``positions of strength" policy at all costs, could work with Johnson for any length of time. His foreign-policy acts were largely determined by his personal ambitions, considerations of prestige, concern for his own popularity, and efforts to secure support from or neutralise criticism by various political groupings within the country. He always reckoned with the interests of the most aggressive circles of US imperialism and the MIC's demands.
From time to time, the leader of the Democrats was lot loath to show his reserve with respect to the Pentagon's military elite. He said that US generals ``know only two words---spend and bomb'', claimed that he did not trust the generals and made a point of personally endorsing all the targets of US bombing raids on the __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---01462 33 territory of North Vietnam. During the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic, he even sent an adviser along with the troops to supervise and control the acts of the US military.^^1^^
However, this transparent camouflage could not conceal the fact that in US politics the military reigned supreme. With the spreading scale of the US aggression in Vietnam, the MIC's role steadily increased. The generals were allowed to spend and bomb as much as they wanted. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chiefs of staff of the Army, Air Force and Navy, and the Commanderin-Chief of the US forces in Vietnam made up the group of leaders with whom President Johnson consulted in the first place on operations in Southeast Asia. He used the senior generals to enhance his prestige with US public opinion and to vindicate his line. In the winter of 1968, for instance, he summoned General Westmoreland from Vietnam to deliver a report before a joint session of the Congress to show that the military fully endorsed the escalation of the aggression in Indochina.
The reverses of US imperialism in the international arena, and Vietnam in the first place, made the US leaders take steps to invigorate the activity of the vast foreign-policy machine, and to give it the utmost flexibility, dynamism and purposefulness in fulfilling the main tasks set by the US ruling class. The Johnson Administration introduced various important changes in the system of US government: the importance and responsibilities of the National Security Council were further reduced, and an attempt was made to form a new centre of foreign policy coordination.
The President assigned General Maxwell D. Taylor to head the work of analysing the mechanism of US foreignpolicy decision-making. Interdepartmental^ groups were set up to study the situation in 90 countries around the world. By December 1, 1965, they had formulated the basis of the proposals for the President. Taylor's conclusions contained serious criticism of the National Security Council, which was unable satisfactorily to exercise the function of the President's mainstay in the conduct _-_-_
~^^1^^ Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power, London, 1966, p. 539.
34 of foreign policy. The conclusion was that Washington had no centre to direct international affairs.Johnson accepted the recommendation that the coordination of foreign policy should be concentrated at the State Department, rather than at the National Security Council. For that purpose, the Secretary of State was vested with the powers of overall leadership in foreignpolicy affairs. On March 4, 1966, the President ordered the establishment of an interdepartmental group headed by a Deputy Secretary of State and including a Deputy Defense Secretary, the Director of the Administration for International Development, Director of the US Information Agency and a special Presidential aide for national security affairs. It was instructed to consider and coordinate current departmental problems submitted to it by the Secretary of State or other members of the government concerned with international affairs. Five regional interdepartmental groups were also set up.
The reverses and failures and the decline of US potentialities in the world arena urged upon the Washington leaders a concentration of effort and greater coordination of action by the various departments. President Johnson's restructuring of the foreign-policy administration system was designed to arrange for more efficient implementation of the ruling circles' foreign-policy line in the ever more complicated international conditions.
Apart from everything else, these measures of the Johnson Administration contained a large dose of political hypocrisy, tacking and politicking. With opposition to the MIC growing across the country, the White House appeared to say: ``It is not the National Security Council with its militaristic orientation, but the system of political agencies directed by the State Department that has the chief role to play within the government''. Of course, the reorganisation^ did nothing to weaken the positions of the military circles in US politics.
However, the experimental attempts to cast the State Department in the leading role were short-lived. With the installation of a Republican President at the White House, the National Security Council once again became the hub of the political mechanism to operate with even greater scope than it did under the previous Republican Administration. In his Report to the Congress, on __PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 3* 35 February 25, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon said: ``Upon my inauguration, I reestablished the National Security Council as the principal forum for consideration of foreign policy issues and created a system of supporting committees to serve it. Chaired by the President and comprising the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and others at my invitation the Council provides a focus at the highest level of our government for full and frank discussions of national security issues. Of course, I also consult the Secretaries of State and Defense and other senior advisors individually to obtain their views on national security issues.''
A committee of deputy secretaries, established in place of Johnson's interdepartmental group, became the key agency of the National Security Council, handling the main work in coordinating and planning foreign-policy activity. It included the President's aide on national security matters, a Deputy Defense Secretary, a Deputy Secretary ofj State, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and representatives of other departments when this was required by the problem being discussed.
Within the NSC system there were interdepartmental groups on the situation in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, which in the main retained the same planning and analytical functions with which they had been vested under the Democratic Administration. US leaders believed that the National Security Council system was designed to ensure a long-term approach to international problems and to project these over three or five years. The Republican Administration period was marked by a ``revival'' of the NSC and a greater role for Presidential advisers at the White House, notably that of Henry Kissinger, and a stronger position for the Pentagon. The State Department was further divested of any opportunities of planning the coordination of foreign-policy activity.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Pentagon's Five AspectsThe Defense Department has an obvious edge over the other government departments in Washington. The Pentagon is a virtual city within the city of Washington, 36 with the world's largest parking lot, its own helidrome, hospital, shopping centre, three restaurants, six cafeterias and eight bars, its own chapels and cinemas, travel agencies, and law firms. Its construction on a swampy tract of land, which had once been a car dumping ground, was started five months before Pearl Harbor, and ended 16 months after the Second World War. It is the world's largest office building, which looks like a fortress, with five rings of corridors 17 kilometres long.
The US Defense Department affects the lives of millions of Americans. Every day nearly 30,000 employees go to work in the Pentagon. Altogether, almost 5 million persons are employed within the Defense Department system, of whom nearly one-half are military personnel, wearing army, air force, navy and marine uniforms. Close to 40 million Americans have their names listed by draft boards, and of these more than 20 million are young people under the age of 26 years. The military seek to control their lives and thinking, and so to influence the ideological climate in the USA.
The Pentagon is also Big Business. US generals control vast material resources, and wield instruments which exert a substantial influence on US economic life. One US family out of six depends for its livelihood on jobs provided by the Defense Department, which owns $ 200,000 million worth of real estate and facilities, that is, more than 65 leading US industrial corporations. The Pentagon is the biggest customer: in 1969 it had 200,000 contracts for the supply of goods worth a total of $40,000 million, with 100,000 general contractors (this excludes purchases worth less than $10,000). The Pentagon is also the biggest landowner: it has 13 million hectares of land under its bases, installations and training areas in the United States and abroad. Under Pentagon contracts, thousands of corporations manufacture various types of lethal weapons. There are as many Americans in uniform as are employed on American farms or in construction, or as in finance, insurance and real estate taken together. The Pentagon's economic operations are on a scale which defies comparison with that of the aggregate operations of all the other US Departments.
Another aspect of the Pentagon is its concentrated control of the vast fire-power of the US nuclear-missile 37 force, whose labyrinthine command centre is located on an underground floor of the Pentagon. It is serviced by a communications centre which is located below it, and which is in round-the-clock contact with all the headquarters of the army groups, air force and naval units, missile sites 'and US bases abroad. This is the control centre which'issues commands to troops deployed on US territory and overseas, armadas'bf US warships plying foreign waters, and'missile and Air Force units poised 'for strikes against other countries.
Finally, the Pentagon is the embodiment of the MIC's ever growing influence on foreign relations. It is no longer merely a military department but is the centre at which the interests and practical acts of the generals and the industrialists are interlaced. That is why the Pentagon is a symbol not only of the US military but also of the bloc of generals and businessmen. The US orientation upon ``positions of strength" has logically invested the Pentagon with tremendous influence on every aspect of US foreign affairs. In the postwar period, it has come to head the other government departments engaged in activities' abroad. Indeed, very frequently the clue to Washington's decisions~'on various international issues is to be found at 'the Pentagon.
__FIX__ Blocky ink "smudges" seen as ASCII by ABBYY.On September 18, 1947, the Stars and Stripes, the US national flag, was hoisted over the Pentagon in place of the flags of departments of the Army and Navy. To the Army and Navy emblems on its facade was added the Air Force emblem, for under the National Security Act the USA was now to have a single Department of Defense bringing together the Army and Navy departments and the newly established Air Force Department. James V. Forrestal was appointed its first chief.
The Pentagon's subsequent history has brought out two main tendencies. The first was to centralise the administration of the war machine from one centre and to reduce the autonomy of the individual services. The second was a steady extension of the ties and contacts between the Pentagon's top generals and Big Business, a build-up of co-operation between the career military and the arms business through more vigorous military preparations, andean urge to follow the most aggressive course in foreign policy.
38With the exception of the early years of the Republic--- a Navy Department was first set up in 1783---the Army and the Navy used to be independent government agencies. In the past, constant attempts were made to establish a single system for the Armed Forces or, at any rate, to arrange the maximum coordination of action by the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. In the prewar period and during the Second World War, at least 55 bills were placed before the US Congress for reorganising the US Armed Forces, but none of these was passed.
The obstacles to a merger of the 'Armed Forces consisted of the traditions and interests of the military and political groupings connected with the Army or the Navy, and the expectations of the financial and industrial monopolies specialising in the manufacture of weapons for the two Departments. The greatest resistance to any merger came from naval circles which feared that the Navy would lose its leading role. The Army did want a centralised Armed Forces Department. But the most ardent advocates of reorganisation of the existing war machine were the air force leaders, then within the Army Department, and the aircraft manufacturers who were hoping to rule the roost in a merged department.
The contradictory interests had an effect on the structure of the Defense Department, which was set up in 1947. This obviously showed signs of compromise and efforts to reckon with the views of all the groupings favouring a unification of all the armed services in a single department, together with those who advocated maximum independence for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. In the first few years (1947--1949), the Pentagon was referred to not as the Department of Defense but as the National Military Establishment. It had no centralised administration and was arfairly loose association of the three armed services, each of which retained broad powers for independent decision-making and action. The heads of these departments had the status of government members and sat on the National Security Council. The Act explicitly said that the purpose of establishing the Department was* to ensure (authoritative coordination and unification of leadership but not to* merge the military departments. While the Secretary of Defense was nominally the President's chief aide in matters relating to 39 the Department of Defense, he was not, in fact, the full-fledged chief of the US war machine. He had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the other departments, to decide on spending, appropriations for the needs of the arms and services, etc.
The National Security Act of 1947 merely inaugurated a restructuring of the US war machine. Its soon transpired that the military organisation was incapable of administering the US Armed Forces with an eye to the demands of the foreign policy pursued by the US ruling class. There followed a series of reorganisations, with each new change usually occurring after another spate of major military-political set-backs for the USA in the international arena or events testifying to the continued change in the balance of world forces against US imperialism. Washington's governing circles were faced with the need to take urgent measures so as to adjust the strategic conceptions and structure of the military system to the level of demands arising from the situation taking shape in the world and to bring the war machine into line with the aims of the aggressive US policy. It became a general rule that all the reorganisations of the Pentagon were carried out with the direct participation of financial and industrial magnates; the leading monopolists of 'the USA authored all the plans for restructuring the' US war machine without exception.
In 1949, President Truman signed the 1949 Amendment Act for the National Security Act, which was elaborated on the basis of a project drawn up by a group of bankers. The Pentagon was to be a Department, the powers of the Secretary of Defense were extended and he was henceforth to 'be a civilian appointed~by the President with the approval 'of the Senate. The Defense Secretary is a member of the National Security Council, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the North Atlantic Council. Just under him, within the Pentagon's civilian hierarchy, is a Deputy Secretary who coordinates the day-to-day activity of the Department of Defense, is Acting Secretary in the latter's absence, and represents the Department of Defense on various government bodies and 'international agencies.
In 1949, heads of the departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force were deprived of their status of members 40 of the Administration. The posts of assistant secretaries of defense, including a Comptroller, were set up, with the latter being responsible for framing the military budget. The administration of the US military system was becoming more centralised.
The main feature of Reorganisation Plan No. 6, which was signed by President Eisenhower on June 30, 1953, was extension of the powers of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the latter were to play a greater role. The military leadership was to have the following structure: the Commander-in-Chief (the US President)---the Secretary of Defense---the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the chief consultative organ under the President and the Department of Defense)---the departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force (operational administration of the troops in various military theatres).
The change in the world balance of forces in favour of the socialist camp towards the end of the 1950s, an indication of which came from the launching of the Soviet sputnik, called for fresh and substantial correctives within the US Armed Forces system, and reduction in interdepartmental bickering. The plan for reorganising the military administration, signed by President Eisenhower in 1958, was once again worked out with the direct participation of Big Business, notably men from the Rockefeller financial grouping. As in the past, there was an acute struggle over the restructuring of the Pentagon between rival military-political and monopoly groupings.
In the course of the reorganisation, the powers of the Secretary of Defense in the administration, leadership and control of the US war machine were clearly defined. Foreign-policy analysts noted that never before had such strong and definite language been used to emphasise the powers of the Secretary of Defense. He was empowered to change the functions of the departments of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force and also to transfer'funds appropriated for one armed service to another. The powers of the heads of the individual departments were reduced and confined to the combat training of the troops,' logistics and administrative duties.
The powers of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were further extended. Research and Engineering Administration was set up at the Department of Defense 41 to evaluate various weapons systems and coordinate the development of military hardware and strategy. That was part of the MIC's response to the US lag in some of the latest technological fields which had been highlighted by the launching of the Soviet sputnik.
US troops stationed in Europe were reorganised into a European Joint Command with headquarters near Paris, thereby making a start on the establishment of joint commands for air force, naval and army units subordinate directly to the President and the US Secretary of Defense. Joint commands for the armed forces in the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean were set up at the end of 1958. Joint commands, including the Caribbean (the Panama Canal Zone), the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Continental Air Defense Command and the Strategic Air Command, were set up in the course of 1959.
With these innovations there was a change in' tht pattern of administration of the US Armed Forces: the Commander-in-Chief (the US President)---the Secretary of Defense---the Joint Chiefs of Staff and---bypassing the departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force---the joint commands.
The 1958 reorganisation centralised the administration of the US war machine. The leaders of the career military felt that they were more solidly established within the system of Administration agencies, while the role of the military factor among the other instruments of the expansionist foreign-policy line pursued by the US ruling class was further increased.
Under McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, the Pentagon came to play an even greater and more influential role within the US Administration. The military leaders broadly invaded the foreign-policy sphere, actively working in ideology and propaganda. The leaders of US diplomacy frequently looked to the views expressed by the generals.
McNamara laid great emphasis on scientific and technical innovations. He began, among other things, to deploy at the Pentagon an automated command system to provide the US President and his aides with operational opportunities for analysing and evaluating the international and military-political situation. Considerable 42 changes were also made in the established principles for framing and allocating the budget of the US Department of Defense. The first thing McNamara' demanded was a precise and detailed substantiation of the claims put in by every arm of the services for its share of the budget appropriations. Attempts were made to forecast the requirements of the services and the volume of appropriations for the various programmes over a period of years ahead. McNamara's innovations did nothing to reduce overall military spending, being merely aimed at more rational use of the vast amounts of money going into the build-up of mass destruction weapons.
McNamara's tenure of the post of Secretary of Defense shed additional light on the so-called problem of civilian control over the activity of the career military. He obviously tried to put the generals in their place, for they did not 'relish some' of McNamara's views. But even McNamara, who is regarded as the outstanding Pentagon chief since the establishment of the US Department of Defense, succumbed to their pressures and resigned before the end of his term under the Johnson Administration.
When he left the Pentagon, all manner of charges were hurled at him by the MIC leaders. Thus, it was claimed that the result of the ``over-concentration of power, the centralization of control and the proliferation of staffs, agencies, committees and bureaucrats has been to dull the cutting edge of the sword---the fighting forces''. It was alleged that work had been slowed down on some weapons projects and that his ``veiled contempt to what he thought of as 'military minds''', his mistrust of the military ``have reduced initiative and flexibility and have hurt service morale".^^1^^
McNamara had been no ``dove'' in any sense. He was quick to see that some aspects of US policy lacked prospects and frequently sought other and what he believed to be more advantageous approaches and ways for conducting the main foreign-policy line of US ruling circles. Accordingly, McNamara's activity helped to increase the scope of war preparations, to bolster the positions of the military in US political life, and establish at the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Hanson W. Baldwin, Strategy for Tomorrow, New York, 1970, pp. 325--26.
43 Pentagon of the Systems Analysis and various evaluations and prognostication programmes.Many US analysts point to the failure of his attempts to re-establish ``civilian control" at the Pentagon and his inability to exercise effective control over the military budget. On the whole, he managed to do little in correcting what he believed required changing.
The leaders of the subsequent Republican Administration kept stressing that on the basic military-political issues they preferred to rely on the views of career military men and the leaders of the major corporations allied with the Pentagon. The MIC leaders---the Defense Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and representatives of monopoly capital---were installed as permanent members of the NSC and other key political and military agencies. They had the decisive say in laying down the government line on issues like the aggressive war in Indochina, up until its end, the US unilateral anti-India stand during the Indian-Pakistani conflict in late 1971, and various other aspects of US foreign policy.
Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird, who served under the first Nixon Administration, reduced the civilian role within the military system and gave the military much greater autonomy. He re-established the relations with the generals, which had been spoiled in the McNamara period, and said that their top leaders were ``highly intelligent citizens ... well equipped to make meaningful recommendations for policy".^^1^^ Elliot L. Richardson, who took over from Laird as Secretary of Defense, pursued the same line. His reputation of ``liberal'' was designed to provide the Department of Defense with a front to cover up the generals' greater independence, and the acts of the men who headed the MIC and who were not popular either with the Congress or with the public.
Under the Republican Administration, as in the past, the MIC leaders continued to push the reorganisation of the US military system.
The Pentagon turned out to be one of the first Washington departments to be involved in the Republican _-_-_
~^^1^^ Melvin R. Laird, A House Divided. America's Strategy Gap, Chicago, 1962, p. 95.
44 Administration's reorganisation plans. The reasons were many: there was the general military-political crisis of the USA, which was most sharply expressed in the fiasco of the US aggression in Indochina, the USA's financial difficulties, which were compounded by the growing military outlays, the urge to put some order into the business of allocating war contracts---naturally, within a framework acceptable to the MIC---and finally, growing demands from the public and political circles for cuts in military spending.After several modifications, the US Department of Defense had the following basic structure. The main element of its system is the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Secretariat) with about 3,500 staff members. This includes the staffs of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, of the assistant secretaries and a general adviser. Each of these men---a total of of 12---has the right of direct contact with the Secretary of Defense or his Deputy; altogether, 27 higher civilian and military leaders have the right directly to apply to the Secretary or his Deputy. Among these top members of the Pentagon important functions are exercised by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, who is called the Pentagon's Secretary of State. He is responsible for framing and coordinating the plans, approaches and proposals of the Department of Defense relating to the political, economic and military aspects of US foreign policy, and deals with the USA's relations with NATO, CENTO, and other international military outfits. Among his duties is to prepare the Pentagon's stand in negotiations and contacts with foreign states which have US troops, bases and other military installations on their territory, and so on.
The Pentagon's Secretary of State has under him the Defense Security Assistance Agency which was set up by Laird to coordinate military aid to foreign states.
The Assistant Secretary for Atomic Energy directs the framing of plans to develop and manufacture atomic weapons and introduce them into the Armed Forces. He is also responsible for testing the latest types of atomic and thermonuclear weapons and is a leader of the ``US atomic community'', which is an association of government and private establishments (Atomic Energy Commission, 45 various research outfits, etc.) dealing with the problems of atomic energy and nuclear weapons.
Among the key elements of the Defense Department's machinery is the office of Comptroller, whose main function is to draw up the military budget, the estimates and recommendations on all financial matters. He has great opportunities for exerting an influence on the activity of the various departments, the formulation of programmes for equipping the forces with new types of weapons, etc. Accordingly, the Comptroller is an important person not only within the Pentagon system but also in other Federal establishments. He also has access to the boards of the major corporations, who make fortunes on the manufacture of weapons under Pentagon contracts.
[The Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of special operations has a place apart among the Pentagon leaders. He directs the intelligence and subversive activities of the intelligence centres of each arm of the services. He works in close contact with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency andj is in charge of the far-flung web of US military intelligence.
The Pentagon's propaganda activity is directed by the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, who maintains constant contacts with the United States Information Agency and other outfits engaged in ``ideological and psychological warfare".
In addition, the Secretary of Defense has assistants for manpower and reserve affairs, installations and logistics, and legislative affairs. He also has a general adviser on legal matters.
While the civilian leadership is exercised by the Secretary of Defense, his deputy and assistants, the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest agency of military leadership in the Department. The 1947 National Security Act established that the functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff include the formulation of strategic plans and strategic command of the Armed Forces. The Joint Chiefs of Staff exercise the functions of chief military adviser to the US President, the National Security Council and the Department of Defense.
The Committee consists of the four senior career military men: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 46 and the Chief of Staff of the US Army, Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of the US Air Force. When discussion bears on matters relating to the Marine Corps, its Commandant also attends meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was instituted in 1949, with the Chiefs of Staff of the three Armed Services filling it by rota (the term---two years--- is usually extended to four). The first Chairman was General Omar Bradley (US Army). He was followed by Admiral A. Radford, and in 1957 by Nathan F. Twining, US Air Force Chief of Staff. In the late 1960s, the post was filled by US Army General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, and so on. When the post of Chairman was instituted, it was specified that he had no right to vote or hold a military command, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff soon became the actual chief of the US war machine. He became an influential representative of the Armed Forces whenever military problems were discussed in the Congress, the National Security Council and with the President.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff exercises direct control of the joint commands, where the main operational strike forces of the war machine of US imperialism are concentrated. In the course of the latest reorganisations the role of the Departments of the Army, the Air Force and the Navy has markedly changed. None of these has any military units under its operational control, their functions being confined to training personnel and providing logistics for the joint commands.
The structure of the US Department of Defense reflects its growing functions of suppressing and putting down progressive and anti-war forces.
The US Defense Department has directly assumed punitive functions and also the police functions of the Department of Justice and the FBI, an activity which has grown since the late 1960s, following the spread of Black movement and massive demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. Although the ramified US system of punitive agencies is historically rooted, the civilian forces were found to be inadequate to maintain the ``law and order" required by the ruling class, and so the army was brought in to put down riots and to control mass action. Soon 47 after the disturbances in Washington in April 1968, sparked off by the assassination of the Black leader, Martin Luther King, the Pentagon set up its Directorate of Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations.
The following year the Pentagon set up its Directorate for Civil Disturbances, which has constant surveillance over 150 cities in the United States. Its electronic computers are linked up with the national radio network to signal any incident capable of developing into a riot.
The intelligence of the Army keeps records on 7 million citizens, whose political, labour-union, religious or occupational activities or statements are recorded by electronic computers. This is the biggest memory bank in the USA. The Pentagon's information file is equal in volume to that of the FBI. About 1,000 detective soldiers in mufti work in about 300 investigation offices across the United States. The rifle-carrying US soldier, hung with gas mask and grenades, has become a habitual figure^in the streets of US cities. Jerome P. Cavauagh, Mayor of Detroit, declared after one such operation against civilians: ``No more disastrous consequence for this city or this nation could take place than if we had to maintain a prolonged military presence on our streets. If the National Guard were to become part of our daily life, our freedom would not survive."^^1^^ That is exactly the situation into which the country is being pushed by the MIC.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Congressional ``Advice and Consent''The generals and the military-industrial circles have established strong positions at every level of executive power and also in the Congress, the law-making body.
Under the US Constitution, the Congress has broad powers in foreign and military policy, and it alone can declare a state of war. Presidential appointments to various government posts require Congressional ``advice and consent''. The Congress also decides on the appropriations, supervises the combat readiness of the Armed Forces, and formulates the directives which determine their activity.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 153.
48Today, these broad constitutional powers of the Congress have been markedly whittled away. Indeed, it has been removed from the formulation of policy, and no longer plays a major role in foreign-policy and military decisions. One of the reasons is the growing concentration of power in the hands of the US President, who has been acting on the major issues without Congressional ``advice and consent".
Another reason is that the MIC is now capable of overriding any opposition on the part of the solons on Capitol Hill. In practical terms, the members of the Congress are powerless in resisting any decision or act of the President and the Pentagon. However, throughout the whole ``positions of strength" period, except just recently, the men on Capitol Hill had no intention of opposing the militaristic plans. On the contrary, the Congress has, in effect, become an organ with whose help the military secure approval of all their claims.
There is much evidence of the diverse ties between the men of Capitol Hill and the MIC leaders: the ritual of the announcement, by agreement with the Defense Department, by individual congressmen and senators, of every batch of arms contracts for the corporations located in the latter's states and electoral districts; support by some congressmen or group of legislators of specific projects for the development of new weapons systems; joint propaganda campaigns by congressmen and generals extolling the contribution to ``national security" by the arms corporations with which they are connected; the Pentagon's ``services'' for members of the Congress in the form of free flights on Air Force planes across the United States or to foreign countries and, what is even more important, the motion of MIC requests, however large these may be, for appropriations to build up nuclear missile and other weapons.
The MIC has a powerful military lobby on Capitol Hill which maintains ``ties'' with congressmen. The maintenance of this lobby of 340 military officers, that is, roughly one Pentagon man for every two congressmen (535 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate) costs 4 million dollars a year. It is not surprising that when, in 1964, McNamara announced his intention to close down 95 military bases, he received at his __PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---01462 49 office 169 telephone calLs, from indignant congressmen before lunch-time. The generals operate through influential war veterans organisations, whose membership runs to millions, and also through the National Guard Association, and so have opportunities of exerting influence on the results of electoral campaigns in various states, so making the congressmen even more dependent on the military.
The MIC's overt and covert activity is centred on four Congressional committees. The Senate and House Armed Services Committees deal with the general questions of US military policy, and carry on the main discussion concerning the Pentagon's military-political propositions, and the structure and size of the US Armed Forces. The Senate and House Military Appropriations Committees consider the Pentagon's draft budgets and approve the appropriations for the US Armed Services. These are extremely important agencies, because the Army, the Air Force and the Navy have to fight each other for a larger share of the ``budget pie''. Representatives of the Armed Services and allied industrial corporations use the sittings of these committees to secure approval of their plans for stepping up the arms drive.
Most of the members and the chairmen of these committees are conservative Southerners, because in accordance with US political traditions, liberal Northerners deal mainly with economic and social matters, and Southerners with military matters. For decades, the Dixiecrats have controlled national defence matters in the Congress. At the end of the Second World War, 40 per cent of the Army officers and 44 per cent of the Navy officers were Southerners. It was quite natural, therefore, that Southerners sought to control the committees dealing with military matters. But their membership of these committees helped further to concentrate military installations in the Southern states, and this made the military commanders and the Southerners who headed the committees join hands. Congressional annals abound in examples of committee chairmen allocating more credits for military programmes than the Administration itself requested.
The readiness on the part of most members of the Congress unconditionally to support the Pentagon springs 50 from the common class interests of the reactionary leaders on Capitol Hill and US military leaders. The extremism of many congressmen, urging aggressive acts in the international arena, makes them natural allies of the reactionary generals.
US law-makers have a direct stake in increasing appropriations for the Pentagon. War contracts exert a substantial influence on business activity in all the states, and it is the prime concern of many congressmen to get the Pentagon to award more contracts for their '``own'' industrialists. In return, these law-makers offer support for the Pentagon's steps.
Nor do the congressmen display an interest in military programmes only for the benefits which they hold in store for their electoral districts. They also have a personal stake in them. Since 1968, members of the House of Representatives have had the duty annually to declare their earnings (apart from their Congressional salary) received from enterprises or establishments working for the Federal Government or operating under its financial control. This has caused much confusion on Capitol Hill, for it turned out that many of the ``people's representatives" owned stock issued by enterprises working under Pentagon contracts; nearly one-half of the Armed Services Committee were stockholders of corporations which rank among the hundred biggest contractors of the Department of Defense.
The state of Georgia ranks 16th in population, but is always among the 10 leading states receiving the fattest arms credits. It is among the 9 states whose arms contracts annually come to more than | 200 per head, and is among the 5 states where Pentagon contracts provide over 15 per cent of the personal incomes. It is third, after California and Texas, in the number of military personnel stationed on its territory. One major reason for this is that Georgia politicians long held the posts of chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
The city of Charleston in South Carolina is often called a miniature MIC, for it is a concentration of military installations: an air force base, a Polaris submarine base, an arms depot, a naval missile training centre, a naval supplies depot, an army depot, and a naval, hospital. Charleston has dozens of enterprises working __PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__ 4* 51 on Pentagon contracts, including plants belonging to General Electric, AVCO Corporation, Lockheed Aircraft, McDonnell-Douglas, United Aircraft and J. P. Stevens. Fifty-five per cent of the wages paid to the inhabitants of the city comes from the MIC.
The reason is the same: L. Mendel Rivers, who represents Charleston on Capitol Hill, has been Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Congressmen, brass hats and industrialists resort to devious methods, including downright swindling, in order to meet the Pentagon's requests and to multiply the wealth of the major corporations, who make up the notorious MIC. Here is only one recent example.
Lytton Industries, a giant US monopoly with shipyards in Mississippi, has received over the past few years fat MIC contracts worth $ 3,000 million for the construction of 39 warships. These fabulous contracts are the envy of its rivals, and would have never been awarded to the corporation but for the fact that in the early 1970s the Senate Armed Services Committee was chaired by the Senator from Mississippi, John C. Stennis. The corporation has many of its men in key posts at the Department of Defense. Another important factor was that the President of Lytton Industries is the prominent businessman Roy Ash, who at one time served as US Presidential Adviser on government reorganisation, and in 1973 became a member of the US government.
In early 1972, it turned out, however, that Lytton Industries was not able to cope with the large slice of the Pentagon's ``budget pie" which it had obtained by means of behind-the-scenes deals in the Congress. The corporation did not have the production facilities to fulfil a contract of that scale, and failed to meet the deadlines. By law, Lytton Industries should have paid a fine for breach of contract, but there again the machinery of machinations and abuse was set in motion, for it operates smoothly within the MIC for the benefit of its powerful members. A payment was, indeed, made, but in reverse: not into the US Treasury but to Lytton Industries. The Congress and the Pentagon hastened to rescue the ship-builders who found themselves in difficulties, and reduced their orders by shelving the construction of several ships. An effort was made to leave the impression 52 that Lytton Industries had suffered by being deprived of a fat contract. As a result, the US Department of Defense paid the corporation compensation running to J 110 million.
But that is far from all. Considering that Lytton Industries were about a year behind schedule in building the first of the five assault helicopter carriers ordered by the Pentagon, the deadlines were rescheduled and a new date was written into the contract by the Defense Department, extending the construction period by another year. In this way, says Congressman Les Aspin, who exposed these machinations, Lytton Industries never paid a fine of $600,000 for delaying the construction of each of the five helicopter carriers---a veritable present of $3 million from the Pentagon.
Even the US government finds it hard to withstand the joint pressure exerted by the military, the arms manufacturers and congressmen panting for largest possible appropriations for the Pentagon's needs. Now and again the congressmen have put through, at the MIC's suggestion, larger appropriations for the arms race than those required by the official Department of Defense leadership. In particular, the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed the Congress that Defense Secretary McNamara had cancelled its decision to seek appropriations for developing a new type of bomber. Whereupon a bill to appropriate nearly 112 million for these purposes was approved on Capitol Hill, despite the fact that the Pentagon draft budget did not contain any such request. On the other hand, in 1968 McNamara put before the Congress a proposal to finance the project for the TFX fighter-bomber, to which the Department of the Navy objected. The Secretary's proposal was defeated on Capitol Hill following `` professional" advice presented to the law-makers by the Navy Air Staff.^^1^^
The activity of the military lobby in the Congress is a joint operation by the Pentagon and the arms industry. Whenever a hitch develops in the Congress following approval by the Department of Defense of some corporation proposal to develop a new type of weapon, the MIC steps in: the Pentagon has the Congress organised like _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 42.
53 a ``marine corps landing'', with generals, admirals and top civilians ``always ready to run up to the Hill"~^^1^^ to remove any obstacles in the way of the plans put forward by the military and the arms manufacturers.Up until the end of 1968, only a few of the 100 senators and 435 congressmen spoke out against the Pentagon's excessive spending and criticised the US policy in Southeast Asia, demanding an end to the Vietnam war and a pull-out of all the US armed forces from that region. Most members of the Congress approved all the steps of the US Administration and the US military in enlarging the aggression in Vietnam. US military leaders now and again simply ignored the Congress, concealing from its members plans for their key measures by classifying them as ``secret'' or ``urgent''. Frequently, congressmen have to vote ``blindly'' for various bills dealing with military matters, and to refrain from interfering in the Pentagon's affairs, limiting their participation in discussing military-strategic matters, because they are not allowed to have a say in decisions on major problems.
J. William Fulbright, former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, complained that the US Congress has, in effect, been deprived of a say on foreign policy. Thus, Fulbright was alone of all the senators to attend several of the meetings of the National Security Council as a silent observer when it was working out the Bay of Pigs operation.
When the'Cuba crisis came to a head in October 1962, Fulbright was summoned to the White House for a briefing on the plan of operations, which had already been approved the day before. When the decision to intervene in the Dominican Republic in 1965 was being worked out, the Congress was not even informed of the steps the President was about to take. Fulbright also cites other eloquent examples of political decisions being taken apart from the Congress and public opinion at large.^^2^^
The MIC has managed to get the Congress to meetjits claims, and has overthrown many barriers in the way of broader war preparations, confidently withstanding _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 42.
~^^2^^ J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, New York, 1967.
54 the activity of the anti-militarist opposition, which has yet to acquire the strength to keep the MIC in check.The leaders of US militarism have instruments in the Congress which guarantee, whatever the situation, approval of the bills they need and, conversely, defeat of any resolutions the MIC does not like. Just recently, a number of amendments limiting military spending were defeated in the Congress under the MIC pressure, including Senator Proxmire's proposal to put a $66,000 million ceiling on the military budget and other amendments designed to curtail the Pentagon's excessive claims.
The Congress continues to be a reliable partner of the MIC, promptly meeting its demands with its ``advice and consent''. No wonder, one-time Defense Secretary Laird, addressing a press conference, expressed gratitude for the congressmen's attitude to the Pentagon, and declared on behalf of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, and on his own behalf, that the Congress had supported the Defense Department ``100 per cent on every major request to date.'' The Department, he added, has the ``best batting average of any department in government."^^1^^
With this kind of treatment at every echelon of the government hierarchy in Washington, the MIC has a key position in US politics and exerts a big influence on the US Executive and the Legislature.
_-_-_~^^1^^ The New York Times, September 20, 1970, p. 24.
[55] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE MIC AND THE ECONOMY __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Pentagon and the MonopoliesWithin the framework of US state-monopoly capitalism, the military and the industrialists work together in a great variety of forms. They have established solid ties and constant co-operation not only on the award of contracts and the manufacture of various weapons systems, but also in exerting an influence on thinking in the Administration and the Congress.fThrough the use of the mass media, the MIC builds up the public opinion it'needs in Ihe country and exerts an influence on the lines of scien1ific and technical progress and other aspects of US life^
The MIC has as its political basis the imperialist i programme of the US ruling class, and as its material basis, the programme for militarising the US economy ?and the arms drive with its fabulous profits. The core of the MIC consists of the vast material facilities, financial and economic instruments, the devastating power of modern weapons, the army of many millions, and the opportunities for exerting an influence on domestic and foreign policy, all of which are controlled by the Pentagon and the monopolies.
In the past few years, a number of new and key aspects of the balance of strength and state of affairs within the MIC have been brought out, above all those testifying to the growing role of the state machine---the US Department of Defense---in deciding on the development and activity of private business. The Pentagon has been exercising the function of control over more and more extensive spheres of economic life in the country. It is the sole buyer of a vast volume of items turned out by the powerful arms corporations. On its contracts depends economic activity in many areas and the lot of millions of US citizens.
56Private corporations engaged in the arms business fall under the influence of the Defense Department, and those who sell their products almost entirely to the Pentagon lose their autonomy. The Department gradually takes over, directly or indirectly, many of the important functions which constitute the prerogatives of private-corporation executives. Nowadays, the Pentagon dictates not only the type of products the arms manufacturers are to produce, but also the size of the capital stock, the nature of corporate operations, and so on. The award of fat contracts for research enables the Pentagon to control the development and engineering of these products by its contractors, thereby making various private corporations dependent on it for years ahead. Much of the production under the Pentagon contracts is carried on at highly specialised plants built expressly for the manufacture of military hardware. As a result, even the giant arms corporations face formidable obstacles when for various reasons they seek to switch from military to civilian production.
In the past few years, the arms business has become so'dependent on the Pentagon that it has come to be known as a ``captive'' industry. Mobilising all'their resources and committing these to boosting every aspect of the arms drive business circles surrender some of their autonomy in favour of the Administration's organising and coordinating activity. The steady spread of state-monopoly capitalism in arms manufacture does not infringe on the interests of Big Business, for as the leading partners in the MIC, the monopolies receive the highest possible profits. The military provide the necessary production facilities, which remain under their control, for a massive build-up of modern weapons. This opens up for Big Business ever growing sources of fabulous profits to be gained from Pentagon contracts.
In the United States, it is the big capitalists who manage arms production and administer state-monopoly policy in the military field. The whole of the elite of the US Department of Defense consists of men who come from the financial-industrial circles and who are guided chiefly by their will. Thus, ever since the US Department of Defense was set up, men representing monopoly capital have virtually always filled the posts of Secretary of 57 Defense, and his deputies and assistants, who have to be civilians by law. Nearly all the Defense Secretaries have come from the boards of powerful industrial corporations or banks.
James Forrestal, who became Secretary of Defense in 1947, had been on the board of Dillon, Read & Co. His successor L. Johnson worked with the Pennsylvania Railroad and Pan American Airways. General George C. Marshall headed Pan American Airways. Robert Lovett had an interest in the leading arms concern, Brown Brothers, Harriman & Co. Charles Wilson had been a President of General Motors, the giant monopoly. Neil H. McElroy, who headed the Pentagon until the end of 1959, returned to his post of president of the world's biggest soap company, which he had held before becoming Secretary of Defense. His successor as Defense Secretary was Thomas Gates, a leading US banker. Robert McNamara came to the Pentagon after being President of the Ford Motor Company, one of the Big Five in the arms business. Clark Clifford, also a leading businessman, held the post of Secretary of Defense for a short period, Melvin Laird, Elliot L. Richardson and James Schlesinger, who were Defense Secretaries under the Nixon Administration, all had connections with the business world. Indeed, all the other leading posts in the Pentagon which have to be filled by civilians were held by businessmen.
The Texas oil magnate William P. Clements was appointed to the key Pentagon post of Deputy Secretary of Defense under the second Nixon Administration and controlled the award of the Pentagon's arms contracts. Back in 1969, Senator William Proxmire, Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress, declared that Clements could not be impartial on defense issues because he had direct financial interests in the field: he was Chairman of the Board of Governors of Southern Methodist University, which was working on $735,000 worth of Pentagon arms contracts. The Fidelity Union Life Insurance Co., headed by Clements, had extended loans and held stock in the arms industry worth a total of $7.6 million.
The big arms business has fostered the US Defense Department. Even before it was set up in 1947, there 58 were sharp clashes within US financial and industrial circles among the advocates and opponents of an integrated war machine.
Powerful financial groupings took a most active part in the fight over all the subsequent reorganisations of the Pentagon. The interests of monopoly capital were also given top priority during the 1949 restructuring of the US Department of Defense under the Truman Administration. When commencing the review of the organisational structure of the US Armed Forces, President Eisenhower set up a committee, headed by the billionaire, Nelson Rockefeller, to work out the project, which became the basis of the 1953 Reorganisation Plan No. 6. In the post-sputnik era, the Administration once again used the services of the leading financiers. At the request of the US President, a group of businessmen, again headed by Nelson Rockefeller, produced another plan for remodelling the Pentagon, taking account not only of the requirements of the different military-political situation, but also the interests of the leading monopolies. The Rockefeller Committee proposals were, in effect, incorporated in President Eisenhower's Message to Congress on April 3, 1958, and were approved by it.
It became something of a tradition for US Administrations to invite recommendations from Big Business when introducing changes in the administration of the war machine.
In 1969, for instance, a committee of leading businessmen was invited to draw up a programme for reorganising the Pentagon. Of course, the Committee chairman, the banker Fitzhugh of Metropolitan Life Insurance and other members of the Committee looked primarily to the interests of the arms business, for of the 16 members of the committee 9 held leading posts in various corporations, with arms contracts totalling $1,800 million. From the outset, the Fitzhugh Committee was firmly controlled by the MIC. Apart from formulating recommendations concerning ways to make the US war machine more aggressive, the Committee took care to promote the MIC's interests.
The billions appropriated for military purposes every year through the Defense Department are the fuel which sets in motion the MIC's lumbering machinery, with its 59 thousands of giant enterprises, research centres and whole regions, whose very existence depends on Pentagon contracts.
Today, the fact that in 1949 President Truman signed a military budget totalling $14,400 million (5.4 per cent of the national product) is recalled in the USA as a fact of the dim past. Earlier on, in 1929, the US military budget came to only $800 million, and on the eve of the war, in 1939, to about $6,000 million.^^1^^
Military expenditures have grown with the armed interventions, atomic blackmail, the sharp growth in the cost of new weapons systems, whose stepped up manufacture is being recklessly whipped up by the MIC leaders. President Eisenhower used to say that some types of bombers cost the USA their weight in gold.
The profits of the military-industrial corporations have grown at the expense of the US taxpayer, as appropriations were cut off from vital areas of socio-- economic development in US society. President Eisenhower, under whose Administration the MIC began sharply to put on weight and acquire influence in US affairs, tried to set a ceiling for Defense Department spending, but the Pentagon budget continued steadily to grow.
When the Democrats took over, President Kennedy ordered his Defense Secretary to forget about any limitations in determining the MIC's needs. In a Special Message to Congress on Defense Spending on March 28, 1961, he declared: ``Our arms must be adequate to meet our commitments and ensure our security, without being bound by arbitrary budget ceilings. This nation can afford to be strong."^^2^^
President Johnson's sharp increase in direct US involvement in the Vietnam war led to a rapid increase in military spending. Within three years, the Pentagon budget went up from $47,000 million in 1965 to $78,000 million in 1968. At the time, assurances were being issued in Washington to the effect that the growing military outlays would not have any negative consequences for the US economy or finance. In his Budget Message to the Congress of the United States in January 1966, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 8.
~^^2^^ The New York Times, March 29, 1961, p. 16.
60 President Johnson declared: ``We are a rich nation and can afford to make progress at home while meeting obligations abroad.... For this reason, I have not halted progress in the new and vital Great Society programs in ordei to finance the costs of our efforts in Southeast Asia."^^1^^But the Vietnam gamble and the MIC's vast unproductive outlays did much to jettison the loudly advertised Great Society programme. By the end of the 1960s, the USA faced a grave monetary and economic crisis.
Following its installation, the Republican Administration repeatedly declared its intention to reduce the military budget and take steps to switch from a war-time to a peace-time economy. In that period, there was much talk in the United States about the dividends of peace, implying that once the Vietnam war was over the outlays on the aggression in Vietnam could be used for social development. In 1968, the influential Committee for Economic Development and the US Chamber of Commerce published projects for using these outlays for urban redevelopment, and solving the housing, racial and other problems facing the United States. The projects were sponsored by the US Secretary of the Treasury, George P. Schultz, Herbert Stein, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and other prominent leaders.
Since the end of the war in Vietnam, no one in Washington has recalled the dividends of peace. The US budget, far from being reduced by the billions of dollars annually going on the Indochina adventure, was markedly increased. The Christian Science Monitor wrote: ``~`Savings' from the end of the Vietnam war will be outweighed by the need to modernize U.S. armaments, the administration indicates, including the development and procurement of new weapons systems.
``Thus the defense budget is likely to increase, not decline, during Mr. Nixon's second term, even though U.S. armed forces are not engaged in combat."^^2^^
The growth of US military expenditures over the past few years shows that the interests of the MIC and the aggressive circles allied with it always carry the day when _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Budget of the United States Government for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1967, Washington, 1966, p. 7.
~^^2^^ The Christian Science Monitor, January 25, 1973, p. 2.
61 it conies to passing the federal budget. In fiscal 1973/74, military outlays came to $ 73,700 million, in 1974/75 to $82,600 million, in 1975/76 to $90,500 million and in 1976/77 to over $ 110,000 million. If the Pentagon's budget goes on growing at this rate, without any tough measures being taken to limit it, many US specialists believe that by 1983 US military expenditures may well reach the truly fantastic amount of $ 200,000 million.^^1^^One-third of the US military budget goes into the purchase of various types of weapons and nuclear-missile systems. Ten per cent of the appropriations goes into the research and development of new types of weapons. About 30 per cent of the budget covers the maintenance of armed forces personnel. The rest is used for the material and technical backing of the US war machine and other Pentagon needs.
The official data made public by the Administration show the vast outlays on military purposes. Richard F. Kaufman, who was on the staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress and the author of a book entitled War Profiteers, says that ``trying to see the costs of wars past, present and future through the federal budget is like looking through shattered glass.... It conceals large sums and puts forth misleading figures and deceptive narrative. Estimates of future spending are often understated, sometimes grossly."^^2^^
The double standards used to determine appropriations for the Pentagon are also used by government agencies. Considering the 1969 budget, the Federal Budget Administration assessed the military outlays at $81,200 million out of a total of $ 184,600 million, or 44 per cent. The Defense Department said the share of military outlays in the budget came to 42.3 per cent. The government disarmament and arms control agency put the figure at 46 per cent.
The term ``national defense" used in government documents is used to cover up the actual outlays for military purposes. Even the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress said in its annual report that the ``national defense" item in the budget did not fully identify all _-_-_
~^^1^^ U.S. News & World Report, April 12, 1976.
~^^2^^ The Nation, November 1, 1971, p. 429.
62 expenditures that were in essence military or military-related. It proposed the use of the broader term ``national security" instead of ``national defense" to include all the military outlays and programmes relating to military affairs. It said that a correct calculation of the outlays on ``national security" in 1969 would raise the outlays to $106,000 million, and in 1970 to $107,700 million.^^1^^Consequently, the official US military budget is in fact a document which deceives the public on the MIC's actual ``appetites''. Thus, it did not include billions of appropriations for the criminal aggression in Indochina.
One of the most common ways of concealing the true amount of appropriations for the Pentagon is to leave out military programmes from its budget and have them financed by other departments. Thus, under the Kennedy Administration, the Pentagon's military space programme and the outlays for NASA were allocated under various other budgets. However, it is an open secret that the military were directly involved in the main NASA projects, and that outlays for these should have been included in the Defense Department appropriations. But this is not done so as to cover up the truth. The vast outlays of the Atomic Energy Commission are also mainly military-oriented, although they are not reflected in Pentagon appropriations.
Nor are the outlays on ``aid'' to foreign countries included in the official budget of the Department of Defense, despite the fact that over a quarter-century the USA spent nearly $ 150,000 million on all types of foreign aid, mainly for military-economic purposes. The bulk of the vast appropriations for ``aid'' initially went to the Western European countries. A flood of dollars swept across Western Europe when Washington started to knock up the aggressive North Atlantic bloc. From 1948 to 1952, nearly $ 14,000 million was spent to underpin the foundations of the capitalist system, step up the arms drive and resist the growing movement of the social progress forces in the West European countries. With the establishment of NATO and the start of the Korean war, military outlays have become the main item in US foreign ``aid'' appropriations.
_-_-_~^^1^^ The Nation, November 1, 1971, p. 432.
63In the late 1950's, the orientation of US ``aid'' was slightly modified, with most of it going to the `` non-aligned" countries of the Third World. The flood of US dollars went chiefly to areas where US imperialist policy had created hotbeds of armed conflict and countries to which the Pentagon assigned the role of bridgeheads of aggression and bulwarks in the fight against the national liberation movement.
The Pentagon bosses have supported the regimes in South Korea and Taiwan, and fostered the Latin American dictatorships. Generous aid ($ 2,200 million in 1976) went to the Israeli government pursuing a policy of aggression against the Arab peoples. For a long time, the main concern of the men who ran the foreign aid programmes was to finance the drawn-out aggressive gamble in Indochina.
According to Washington officials, US spending abroad is purely military, but one will seek such figures in the Defense Department budget in vain, because they are hidden in the budgets of other departments.
One exception was the financing of the puppet regimes in Indochina. In 1965, when the US troops were broadly involved in the Vietnam war, the Johnson Administration switched the outlays on support for the regimes in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from the overall ``military aid program" which is administered by the State Department, to the Pentagon budget.
This led to a rapid growth of outlays on the maintenance of the Saigon puppets and the regimes in Laos and Cambodia (from $ 100 million in 1964 to $ 2,300 million in 1970). As a result, the jurisdiction on aid to these three regimes was naturally switched from the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees to the Armed Services Committees.
The US ``food for peace" programme also has a military character. Because under the law funds from this programme can be used in other countries only for the purposes of ``common defense'', the cost can be fully debited to the Pentagon, but its budget does not contain any of these items.
Foreign press reports said that only a few men are informed about some types of US military aid. Every year, large quantities of surplus military hardware are 64 handed over to various governments from the Pentagon's stockpiles. Such hardware usually remains listed in inventories for several years, so that its transfer has no effect on current military aid expenditures. Every year, military hardware transfers add up to hundreds of millions of dollars, which come from the taxpayers' pockets. Within the framework of this section of the ``aid program'', military hardware and equipments made available to other countries come to over $ 10,000 million, but this is in no way reflected in the budget.
The advocates of US military superiority, among them the MIC's most active leaders, have a decisive say in increasing military spending and further developing the US war machine. MIC's spokesmen claim that the share of military outlays could be increased to 10--12 per cent of the gross national product (from 1960 to 1969, the figure averaged 8.9 per cent). As the GNP continues to grow, this will mean a potential increase of US military spending by $ 15,000 million a year. One can easily visualise the calamities in store for mankind if the MIC manages to realise these plans.
The MIC is a reactionary alliance of the federal military authorities and the military-industrial corporations and is the most bellicose grouping in the state-monopoly system, whose class aspirations of the monopoly bourgeoisie for militarisation are sharply intensified by its economic stake in the arms drive, which is why it has acted as a constant catalyst of militaristic processes and a mainspring of the US military gambles.
In the past few years, the Pentagon's generous subsidies have gone to create a powerful arms industry which largely differs from the arms business of the prewar and war-time periods. In the old days, the main suppliers of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force were General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, US Steel, General Electric and a number of aircraft companies. In this age of nuclear missile weapons and the scientific and technical revolution the character and scale of the US arms industry has been changed.
Today, the leading role belongs to giant corporations turning out missiles, supersonic aircraft, new types of warships, including atomic missile carriers, andjelectronic equipment. Their growth stems from the construction __PRINTERS_P_66_COMMENT__ 5---01462 65 of vast modern enterprises engaged in the production of the latest types of weapons and making use of scientific and technical achievements for military purposes.
The US arms business is now concentrated in four main industries: aerospace, electronics, weapons and shipbuilding, which handle nearly 85 per cent of Pentagon contracts. They constitute the foundation of the militaryindustrial complex. Ninety per cent of the arms industry output goes into the arsenals of the Department of Defense, including 80 per cent of the aircraft, 60 per cent of the ships and 35 per cent of the electronics output. Many other industries and services operate within the MIC sphere.
The list of the leading arms corporations is headed by aerospace and nuclear missile giants, among them General Dynamics, Lockheed Aircraft, United Aircraft, McDonnell Douglas, North American-Rockwell and Grumman Aircraft, which are greatly dependent on government contracts. The well-known US scientist, Ralph E. Lapp, estimated that in the 1960s Lockheed sales to the Pentagon came to 88 per cent of its total sales, McDonnell Douglas (F-4 Phantom bomber) 75 per cent, General Dynamics (F-lll fighter-bomber) 67 per cent, Boeing (B-52 heavy strategic bombers) 54 per cent. Military items make up less than one half of the output of only 3 of the 12 leading industrial corporations of the USA: General Electric, American Telephone & Telegraph and General Motors.^^1^^
The arms business, is concentrated to the utmost. In 1968, 100 of the leading corporations working for the Defense Department received nearly 70 per cent of all its contracts. General Dynamics, which topped the list, had been awarded contracts worth $ 2,200 million. Four other corporations had arms contracts worth over $ 1,000 million each.
Within the MIC, there is a fierce rivalry for leadership and for the most lucrative contracts. From year to year, there is a change in the list, as some giants give way to others with stronger ties with the Pentagon, the Congress and the Administration.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ralph Lapp, The Weapons Culture, New York, 1968, pp. 186--87.
66In the early 1970s, the MIC was shaken by the sensational report that Lockheed was on the verge of bankruptcy. Its directors declared that unless they had an additional subsidy of $ 500 million they would have to suspend the programme for developing the giant C-5A military transport and a number of other weapons systems. Collapse was facing a corporation which had been receiving million-dollar profits and had invariably ranked among the chief contractors of the US Defense Department. Indeed, for many years it headed the arms contract league. Military items make up nearly 90 per cent of its output, including anti-submarine bombers, Polaris and Poseidon missiles, Midas and Samos intelligence satellites, and various other things. Lockheed aircraft are also being used in the air forces of nearly40 other countries, including South Korea, Japan, Greece, the Republic of South Africa, Spain, Saudi Arabia and Thailand.
Lockheed was rescued through the efforts of the military and the Administration, which gave it a loan of $250 million in 1971, and it once again ranks first among US arms contractors.
The story of Lockheed's ups-and-downs reveals an important aspect of the state of affairs within the MIC. Analysis shows that there is relatively little change among the top corporations in the arms business: the 18 corporations which in 1958 were among the 25 biggest US arms makers, were again among the 25 leaders in 1967, a decade later. Yarmolinsky says that ``the relatively low turnover among the top companies, which are mainly the large aerospace and electronics companies, results in good measure from the formidable barriers to both entry into and exit from the market for major weapons systems.'' Apart from the need for large subsidies, the barriers to entry frequently assume the form of scientific and engineering potentialities required for the development and production of modern aerospace weapons. The barriers to exit include the vast industrial, scientific and technical potential of the corporations, their close ties with the Pentagon, and the readiness of the authorities to help out the leading arms suppliers.^^1^^ Those are the barriers _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 251.
67 which enabled the Pentagon to snatch Lockheed from the jaws of financial crisis.The losses among the smaller arms corporations are much greater. Of the corporations which in 1967 ranked from 25th to 100th, 41, that is more than one-half, had not been among the leading hundred Pentagon contractors a decade earlier. Only in 1965 and 1966, 28 new companies appeared among these hundred, while a corresponding number of companies were pushed into lower places.^^1^^ Companies which do not belong to the missile and electronics business have fewer patrons at the Pentagon.
The state of affairs in some industries and the lot of individual corporations largely depend on the role and importance of the armed service with which these corporations are mainly connected. The arms business circles are directly involved in a scramble for a larger share of the ``budget pie''. For many years, the Air Force, the Navy and the Army have fought each other for the right to have the decisive say in shaping US strategy. Acute intradepartmental battles were first fought in the early postwar years, as the Air Force generals, insisting that the B-36 bomber had to be the basis of the `` containment" strategy, vied with the admirals who were seeking to push through the Congress a programme for aircraftcarrier construction. At the height of the hearings before the House Armed Services Committee, a memorandum was circulated in Washington claiming that the B-36 bombers were not worth a brass farthing. It later turned out that it had been penned by a professional script-- writer hired by the admirals. The Air Force generals were quick to respond: they attacked the admirals tooth and claw.^^2^^ The Air Force ultimately won this battle, but it was only the first in the endless succession of battles now being fought for ever larger arms appropriations.
This shows that the MIC is not in any sense monolithic.There are good grounds to say that the state of things within the MIC suits the most powerful monopolies very well. This applies above all to the sharing out of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 252.
~^^2^^ Edward A. Kolodziej, The Uncommon Defense and Congress. 1945--1963, Ohio State University Press, 1966, pp. 109--11.
68 Pentagon's ``budget pie'', which is what the sharing out of the arms contracts amounts to. White House spokesmen have kept saying that the allocation of government contracts should take place in free competition among the contractors. During his terms, President Truman issued a directive prohibiting the Department of Defense from engaging in direct negotiations with any corporation. There were 17 exemptions from the general rule of free bidding for arms contracts.Today, these exemptions have become the rule in the MIC's practices, for the established principles are those of favouritism, money-grubbing, machinations and the ``you scratch my back" approach. By the early 1970s, only about 10 per cent of all contracts were awarded as a result of free bidding by corporations, while the rest went in behind-the-scenes deals between the Pentagon and the major concerns. Under McNamara, an effort was made to extend the range of corporations with which contracts were concluded, and the number of contracts awarded under free bidding rose to 17 per cent. Data were published to show that abandonment of secret deals would help to save 25 cents in every dollar of military outlays. These intentions were frustrated by the old practices through which the MIC circles enriched themselves. While McNamara was still at the Pentagon, the number of ``free'' contracts once again dropped to a minimum level. Nor was there any change in the situation following the reform put through by the Republican Administration after the publication of Fitzhugh's Report in the summer of 1970. It admitted that until then the Defense Department's policy on the allocation of contracts and weapons development had led to gross overspending, lag in operations and failure to fulfil orders. Accordingly, the Committee worked out a recommendation, subsequently adopted by the government, to abandon the practice of awarding complex contracts under which manufacturers undertook to handle, for the price fixed at the preliminary negotiations, all the stages in the development of weapons systems, from research to engineering. Under the new system, contracts are concluded for the individual stages, and are not signed until the weapons have been fully tested. Defense Secretary Laird commented on the Pentagon's new line and declared: ``One key 69 change was our decision to go to a much more practical 'fly before you buy' approach."^^1^^
The idea was to save money and secure more reliable and high-quality development of weapons systems, especially since there was now no longer any urgency in developing newweapons as there had been during the `` missile lag" in the early 1960s, when the US Treasury had generously paid for many projects, including unprofitable ones, in an effort to prevent any further widening of the gap between the military potentials of the USSR and the USA.
These innovations put through by the Republican Administration helped to bolster the positions of the major monopolies and extended their opportunities for stepping up the arms drive and concluding profitable contracts. The arms business giants make use of behind-- thescenes deals to win the fattest contracts for the manufacture of weapons.
Whereas for the MIC giants it is ``business as usual'', whatever the weather, for the smaller corporations the peace in Vietnam has meant a reduction of earnings. These are mainly corporations which had been supplying the US military in Indochina with shells, mines and other ammunition. With the ceasefire in Vietnam, the Pentagon could dispense with the services of such corporations.
The interweaving of the self-seeking interests ofl the military and the businessmen, the practices and attitudes which have now taken shapewithin'the MIC, and the methods used to allocate arms contracts result in swindling operations of vast proportions, unwarranted overspending, and award of contracts to make weapons which the Defense Department clearly does not need or which are plainly obsolete.
The use of the arms lobby by the leading corporations results in deals involving vast overspending of funds. There are any number of facts to illustrate this in the _-_-_
~^^1^^ ``Statement of Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the FY 1973 Defense Budget and FY 1973--1977 Program. February 15, 1972. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird's Annual Defense Department FY 1973'', in National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, Washington, 1972, p. 15.
70 practices of the MIC leaders. Thus, when the Navy Department purchased spares from the General Electric Company it paid $82 a piece, while other corporations offered the same items for $15 a piece.In late 1969, the Congress released facts about financial machinations in the arms business and totally unwarranted expenditure of billions of dollars on substandard weapons systems.^^1^^
Thus, after $1,300 million had been spent on the Manned Orbiting Laboratory project, it turned out that the system was imperfect, had no prospects before it, and had to be abandoned.
Of course, it would be naive to assume that disorder and lack of organisation prevail within the MIC's business. The US arms industry makes use of the latest techniques, production in the aerospace and electronic and other industries is highly efficient, and the most modern nuclear missile and conventional weapons roll off the assembly lines. Rut because of the MIC's nature and the exploitative substance of capitalist society itself, massive abuses and financial swindles for the enrichment*of the monopolies are inevitable.
An intricate and ramified system of relations, contacts, joint operations in allocating contracts and profits and mutual assistance in risky ventures undertaken by the MIC has taken shape between the military and private business, and has been operating for the benefit of both sides. One of the principal forms of their co-operation is massive and mutual delegation of representatives, respectively, to the private business sector, and to the Pentagon.
Many retired Pentagon generals and officers have jobs in the leading corporations, and their activity helps further to consolidate the MIC's internal^bonds. Generals and officers about to retire willingly accept offers of jobs in the industrial corporations with which they nad established contacts. For their part, the corporations readily provide jobs to retired military men, who continue to maintain 'numerous ties at the Pentagon and in government circles.
_-_-_~^^1^^ William Proxmire, Report from Wasteland. America's MilitaryIndustrial Complex, New York, 1970, pp. 6-7, 57--61.
71When hiring retired generals, corporate management regard them as ``go-getters'' who will help to win profitable arms contracts from the Department of Defense. Many retired military men are employed by private companies. The need to look into the activity of lobbyists in general's uniforms has been repeatedly urged in the Congress because of its growing scale, but the MIC leaders have blocked any extensive study of this matter. When a subcommittee for special investigation of the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Edward F. Hebert, began its hearings in the summer of 1959, it brought out striking examples of collaboration between the military and the manufacturers.
Senator Paul H. Douglas made a study of 100 major arms corporations and established that in 97 of them leading posts were held by 768 retired officers with the rank of colonel and higher.
The largest number of retired military men was employed by corporations with the biggest arms contracts. Lockheed and Westinghouse used over 60 colonels, generals and admirals each. General Electric, a supplier of missile weapons for the Department of Defense, had taken on 54 officers, among them 17 admirals and 7 generals. Radio Corporation of America used 39. Scores of retired officers were employed by other corporations working under Pentagon contracts.
Since then the movement of the military into private business has continued. A decade after the hearings arranged by the Hebert Subcommittee, Senator Proxmire managed to establish that in 1969 100 leading arms corporations employed over 2,100 senior military officers, or nearly 3 times more than they had 10 years earlier, while the 10 leading giants were employing 1,065 senior officers, as compared with 372 10 years earlier.
The indecent ethics and the dirty methods used by the MIC leaders were highlighted once again in 1976 by the scandalous exposures of the Lockheed pay-off operations involving many high-ranking persons in the capitalist countries. It turns out that in return for promises to help Lockheed market its products bribes were paid to the Italian Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, a member of the Dutch Royal family, the Prime Minister of Japan, the leader of the West German Christian 72 Democratic Union and other leaders. Let us note that the US businessmen do not believe their actions to have been immoral.^^1^^
The MIC's history abounds in unseemly instances of corruption, abuse of power, and political and economic swindles. David Packard, Deputy Secretary of Defense under the Nixon Administration, maintained his business contacts with Hewlett-Packard, his own company. When the nature of these ties began to acquire the proportions of a political scandal, Packard had to resign. Roswell Gilpatrick, McNamara's Deputy from 1961 to 1964, was paid $20,000 a year by General Dynamics for his ``services''. Fred Korth, Secretary of the Navy, likewise had to resign following the exposure of machinations over arms deliveries for the continental National Bank.
Several associations which bring together industrial magnates and military men have been set up and are active in the United States.This provides them with opportunities for discussing problems arising from US military policy and to work out not only economic but also political measures. The most powerful and influential associations of military men and industrialists emerged in the postwar years in consequence of the militarisation of the US economy and politics,
In 1946, the leaders of the Air Force and the aircraft corporations set up the Air Force Association, which includes hundreds of corporations engaged in the manufacture of aerospace weapons, and has 90,000 individual members, of whom more than 40,000 are Air Force officers. Nearly 300 aerospace corporations are involved in the ``industrial program'', a branch of the Association. The Air Force Association exerts a marked influence on Department of the Air Force and the make-up of the officer corps of the US Air Force.
The Association publishes the Air Force and Space Digest, a monthly, 98 per cent of whose readers are Air Force officers and generals. Its February 1969 issue, for instance, contained 35 pages of advertisements inserted by arms corporations. General David M. Shoup, one-time commandant of the Marine Corps, who became a sharp _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. S. News & World Report, April 12, 1976.
73 critic of the Pentagon upon his retirement, said the Air Force and Space Digest was the ``unofficial mouthpiece of the US Air Force doctrine, 'party line', and propaganda. It frequently promotes Air Force policy that has been officially frustrated or suppressed within the Department of Defense.... The thick mixture of advertising, propaganda, and Air Force doctrine continuously repeated in this publication provides its readers and writers with a form of intellectual hypnosis."^^1^^The Association of the US Army, set up in 1950, is a centre for arms corporations producing for the needs of the Army. Their directors frequently resort to the services of generals and officers still on active duty. The main task of the Association (over 100,000 members) is to foster ``public understanding and support of the U.S. Army'', that is, of its aggressive and extremist preparations. This militaristic outfit is generously financed: it has receipts totalling nearly $1.5 million a year, with one-third of this amount coming from arms advertisements in Army, the Association's monthly magazine. A leader of the Association has frankly called it a link between the Army and the industry working under Pentagon contracts. Its function is to provide the MIC monopolies with all the information they need about the Department of Defense's fat contracts.
The leaders of the Navy League of the USA call it ``The Civilian Arm of the Navy'', with over 40,000 individual members (in contrast to the Association of the US Army and the Air Force Association, officers on active duty cannot be members of the League) and hundreds of industrial corporations. These MIC associations are actively involved in a running battle between the armed services and the industrial corporations to put through costly projects for new weapons systems and secure lucrative contracts.
In 1950, a National Security Industrial Association was set up for the purpose, according to its official declaration, of establishing close working relations between industrial corporations and executive governmental agencies dealing with national security wholly or in part, and above all with the Defense Department, the Atomic _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Atlantic, April 1969, pp. 52--53.
74 Energy Commission and others. The leaders of the Association keep in touch with the development of US military policy and take part in formulating some aspects of military-political plans. The Association includes over 500 industrial corporations engaged in arms production.The contracts awarded by the Pentagon by means of diverse machinations and with the help of useful people in key posts in the Department of Defense yield fabulous profits for the arms manufacturers. Their profits are 20-- 30 per cent higher than those of corporations turning out civilian products. Considering that contracts worth billions of dollars are awarded to the arms corporations every year, the arms race is a real gold mine for the MIC.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Militarist TechnocratsIn his farewell address, President Eisenhower tied in the growth of the MIC with the advance of the technical revolution. He said: ``In this revolution research has become central. It also becomes more formalized, complex and costly.... Today the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists, in laboratories and testing fields.... For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.... The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal Employment, project allocations and the power of money is ever present, and is gravely to be regarded."^^1^^
US science, an extensive network of research establishments cater for the MIC. The US leaders have no hesitation about the choice of way for the current scientific and technical revolution. From the outset, research and development have been geared to militarism in the light of the ``positions of strength" policy. Under capitalism, the greatest discoveries of our day have been turned against man.
The results of research in the key areas of science and technology of which the US military have secured control are a source of great calamities for the nations. Thus, despite protests from scientists, the projects in nuclear _-_-_
~^^1^^ New York Times, January 18, 1961, p. 22.
75 science and technology were geared to the requirements of the US ruling circles' aggressive line. In the early postwar years, atomic weapons became the basis of the US ruling class's military-political plans.As mankind moved into the space age, the leaders of the military-industrial complex sought to put rockets and space exploration at the service of the ``massive retaliation" strategy and subsequent US military-political doctrines. The discoveries and results of research by US specialists in electronics, cybernetics and microbiology, among other sciences, are now being used for military purposes. US science, running a militaristic course, has been provided with vast financial outlays and industrial facilities.
An elite of technocrats, scientists and technicians, has taken shape in the United States. They are entirely maintained by the arms business magnates and their inventive activity and technical capabilities have been closely tied in with the Pentagon's tactico-technical assignments and requirements. The ``civilian militarists" are a large army of scientists, specialists in the exact sciences and technology, historians, philosophers and sociologists. John C. Donovan, a US military analyst, wrote: ``It has not been the uniformed military chieftains alone who have sponsored the new militarism. There is a new breed of civilian militants, creatures in part of a cold war and of the new technology, who figure prominently in national-security decision-making."^^1^^ The MIC has geared the ideas and energies of these scientists and engineers to the needs of the aggressive US militarists. These men do not give much thought to the need to limit armaments. Within the elite, there is a covert and constant struggle among the specialists in various spheres of military technology which provokes fresh rounds in the arms race and projects the technology of weapons manufacture, development of new weapons systems, and the notorious contest of offensive and defensive weapons systems.
Within the MIC framework, science, the militarists and business are interlaced in a tight tangle of interests and _-_-_
~^^1^^ Jolm C. Donovan, The Policy Makers, New York, 1970 pp. 138--39.
76 interaction, working lo build up the arms industry and stock the Pentagon's arsenals with new types of deathdealing weapons. The 1950s marked a sharp increase in the scale on which US science was involved in the MIC's workings. The Pentagon bosses took the launching of the first Soviet sputnik as the signal for an even greater concentration of efforts in the scientific and technical field, with urgent measures brought to the fore in research, development and engineering in realising militaryoriented discoveries.In the mid-1950s, they reached the conclusion that their own potentialities in research and development were clearly inadequate to meet the challenge of the scientific and technical revolution in the military field and lo ensure the development and production of new generations of weapons unprecedented in sophistication and cost. At one time, the Pentagon relied on the private corporations only in the manufacture of weapons, while carrying on research on its own. At that point there arose the need to set the private sector the task of designing and developing various weapons systems. This was most successfully done by the Air Force, which awarded billions of dollars' worth of contracts to industry for developing modern weapons systems.
In modern conditions, there has been a substantial change in the very nature of new weapons development, chiefly under the impact of its much greater technical complexity. US specialists believed that the old simplified pattern---scientific discovery---technological project--- development of new types of weapons---would no longer work. Modern weapons systems are a synthesis of many achievements in various fields of science and technology, which is why their development requires concerted and purposeful activity by a large number of scientific and technical groups.
A new period of even more extensive and closer ties opened in the relations between the Department of Defense and private business. The arms industry was given a powerful impetus to increase the volume of production. That was when the inventions industry, research and development, powerful research corporations, and diverse ``think tanks" not belonging to the government but working under Pentagon contracts began intensively to emerge 77 within the framework of the arms business, with special emphasis on research in the aerospace, radio electronics and other industries working for the Pentagon.
Vast amounts of money have been appropriated for military research, with expenditures going up from $3,000 million in 1950 to $30,000 million in the early 1970s, and the lion's share of these appropriations going to the needs of the military. President Kennedy once said that the US defence, space and atomic programmes involved two-thirds of all the specialists working in research.
,.<•
The US government has carried through a resolute reorganisation of the entire system of administration in research, with the main purpose of mobilising scientific and technical resources for its ``positions of strength" policy. The administration of science was concentrated in the hands of the government, which set up centralised offices responsible for major scientific and technical lines of development, like the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The Pentagon is the pivot for dozens of major research outfits employing thousands of men engaged on projects ranging from minute transistors to giant ballistic missiles.
The Pentagon leadership has imitated the war-time atomic bomb Manhattan Project in setting up task forces consisting of prominent scientists and engineers in various fields to develop individual weapons systems. Such task forces are frequently headed by career militarymen, like Admirals Hyman Rickover and William Francis Raborn, who headed the development of the atomic submarine, Generals Bernard A. Shriever and Charles H. Terhune, who were in charge of the ballistic missile projects for the Air Force, and senior officers in the Air Force, Navy and Army who headed a number of other task forces.
The US Department of Defense has financed one half of all research in the natural sciences at US universities. David Packard, Deputy Secretary of Defense, declared: ``The Defense Department has been a major factor in the improvement of this country's technology over the last two decades.... Naturally, some other agencies also were supporting programs directed at advancing technology 78 generally, but their support was at a lower level than that provided by the Defense} Department."^^1^^
Through the arms business, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has become a ramified organisation now ranking among the 25 leading military concerns in the USA. The Stanford Research Institute has grown into a major centre working on Pentagon contracts. In 1970, it fulfilled contracts worth over $60 million, with one-half of these consisting of military projects. It has contracted with the Pentagon to work out ideas bearing on the development of chemical and bacteriological weapons and projecting individual components for the latest weapons systems. It has been involved in the ``scientific'' backup of US military gambles in Southeast Asia, its associates have been engaged in secret research in the Mekong delta area for the Navy, and have studied conditions for making army field-radio stations in the jungle more efficient. Fifty-five members of the Institute were attached to the Thai-US military centre at Bangkok, where counter-insurgency methods were being worked out.
The John Hopkins University, the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Mitre Corporation and many other research establishments in the USA have also been engaged in similar activity connected with the Pentagon.
Under Pentagon contracts, the universities have dealt with the most diverse problems.
For many years, the Pentagon has been working on a long-term project, called THEMIS, which is designed to ``stimulate the development of additional centres of defense-relevant research''. Within the framework of this project, the Pentagon has made available funds for research at 52 US universities (totalling $33 million in 1970). Under the project, research contracts have also been awarded by the Pentagon to 62 universities in 44 foreign countries.^^2^^
Foreign scientists moving to the United States in the process of the ``brain drain" from other countries are employed at the Pentagon's experimental laboratories. In 1967 alone, over 40,000 scientists and engineers immigrated to the United States, and many of them went _-_-_
~^^1^^ U.S. News & World Report, August 3, 1970, p. 47.
~^^2^^ William Proxmire, op. cit., p. 10.
79 to work for US militarism. iVow and again this happens without their knowledge, because jobs are offered by independent research centres which by their ``civilian'' charter attract scientists seeking to avoid overt collaboration with the Pentagon. By selecting researchers as consultants and non-staff associates, recommending men for this or that research contract for military purposes and creating a ``neutral'' atmosphere for meetings between generals and scientists, such independent research centres frequently provide the Defense Department with the best men among the foreign scientists settling in the United States.Having started its military research drive, the MIC has made the utmost use of the resources of cybernetics, electronics, mathematics, physics and other sciences to solve the scientific and technical problems in preparing for war.
In the 1960s, the MIC started a veritable boom in planning, intensive development of new methods and ways of prognosticating social processes and scientific, technical and economic development. The study of scientific and technical methods of prognostication was begun within the Department of Defense and then spread to other departments, assuming extensive and truly industrial proportions. From the formulation of short-term militarystrategic, budget and economic programmes, the effort was carried into long-term and complex research.
By the end of the 1960s, the arms corporations had increased the outlays on their own prognostication to $100 million, and spent nearly $10 million on purchases of relevant items from specialised establishments.
In the 1970s, a complex group of research institutions emerged in the USA to work on projects under MIC contracts in the future development of military strategy, economics and international relations through the extensive use of systems analysis, mathematical modelling, computers and automated information systems. More than 60 large industrial companies and dozens of research institutes and government agencies were engaged in prognosticating scientific, technical, military, economic, social and political development.
Special agencies have been set up in the United States to sum up the work of the prognosticating institutes on 80 a national scale. There is a National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress under the US Congress; the National Planning Association, and various other research centres. Long-term prognoses are made for periods from 10 to 30 years ahead, largely in the light of the requirements of US military circles and with an eye to their view of the future development of international relations.
Analysing the changes in the sphere of policy and war resulting from scientific and technical development, Engels once remarked that ``these purely technical advances wholly revolutionised methods of warfare".^^1^^ This is all the more true of the current powerful upsurge in the development of the means of warfare which has been achieved on the basis of the world-wide scientific and technical revolution. The nature of military science has been radically modified first by atomic and then by thermonuclear weapons, strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, which have made necessary regular reviews of strategic conceptions and reappraisals of the tasks and purposes of US foreign policy, as qualitatively new types of weapons emerge.
Present-day US foreign policy shows signs of containing elements of realism which are being actively established, notably, the desire to settle outstanding issues in relations with the Soviet Union. But the circles connected with the MIC hope that in a little while they will be able to launch a counter-offensive against the detente. One must note, in this context, the stepped-up activity of militaristic forces in the USA stubbornly seeking to secure US military-technical superiority, whatever the cost.
In the 1970s, Pentagon leaders have been making ever more frequent attempts to tie in the highly intricate problems arising from scientific and technical progress with political and military-political doctrines and the country's economic potentialities in the hope of laying a theoretical basis for a rational military-technical policy. They attach so much importance to technical superiority that it has even come to be regarded as an inalienable element of US military strength. In this context, _-_-_
~^^1^^ F. Engels, Anll-Dilhrlng, Moscow, 1975, p. 412.
__PRINTERS_P_81_COMMENT__ 6---01462 81 one-time Secretary of Defense Laird declared: ``Any assessment of the future defense needs of the United States must include a program to assure our continued technological superiority."^^1^^ Indeed, that is the main content of the present-day military-technical policy of the United States.This means further improvement of strategic weapons, extensive modernisation of general-purpose weapons; more attention to the development of the means of control and communications and enhancement of their viability; greater military-technical co-operation with the USA's partners in the military blocs; further improvement of the organisation of research and development, and of methods used in purchasing weapons and military hardware, etc.
The Pentagon makes haste to convert scientific inventions and discoveries into modern weapons. In the technological race, special attention is given to the qualitative improvement of strategic weapons. In 1972, the USA spent nearly $20,000 million on its strategic forces (including outlays on research, engineering and operation of missiles, and means of control and intelligence).
The USA's military-political leadership has continued to devote much attention to the Air Force. Attempts are being made to build aircraft flying at hyper-sound speeds (roughly 5 times the speed of sound) with the use of achievements in aerodynamics, missile dynamics, ballistics and other sciences.
In the field of missile weapons, efforts are being made in the USA to improve ballistic missiles by heightening their combat readiness, accuracy, start protection, and greater potentialities for breaking through antimissile defenses.
Revealing the scale of the scientific and technical race for the purpose of developing modern weapons, US military leaders declare that, by the early 1970s, the Defense Department had programmes for developing new weapons systems worth a total of $100,000 million. Work has _-_-_
~^^1^^ ``Statement of Secretary of Dei'ense Melvin R. Laird Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the FY 1973 Defense Budget and FY 1973--1977 Program. February 15, 1972. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird's Annual Defense Department Report FY 1973'', in National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, Washington, 1972, p. 8.
82 already been started on the Poseidon and Minuteman-III missiles, four nuclear aircraft carriers, submarines and other types of weapons. Among the projects ``in the pipeline" are those for a jet fighter-bomber, jet fighters, etc. US science catering for the MIC has been firmly `` programmed" to put through projects for the development of new types of weapons. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Periphery of the ComplexToday, the MIC's activity involves virtually the whole of US territory, all the US states. The broad flow of Pentagon appropriations goes not only into the coffers of the arms manufacturers. Its generous handouts go to feed the local bosses of the petty bourgeoisie,the labour leaders and the labour aristocracy, who have been helping the owners of the arms corporations to exploit their workers to the utmost. These groups of the US social structure make up what could be called the MIC's periphery around its core of the military and the manufacturers.
The MIC's influence and positions and the dependence on it of various circles of US society and the population depend on the extent to which the arms industry is represented in this or that state. Specialisation on definite lines has been taking shape in arms manufacture in the various regions of the United States. The NorthEastern and Central states, Michigan in the first place, with its traditionally well-developed automobile industry, supply the Armed Forces with over two-thirds of their tanks and vehicles. Corporations located along the Pacific Coast receive over one-half of the contracts for missile weapons and space systems. Nearly one-half of the electronic equipment is supplied by the North-Eastern and MidAtlantic states, including New England, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. That is where the population, the local authorities and the labour movement are especially dependent on the military.
In the recent period, there has been a marked change in the MIC's geography. While the Eastern and NorthEastern areas of the United States retain their importance in the arms business, production of the latest types of weapons has shifted to some Southern and Western states. __PRINTERS_P_83_COMMENT__ 6* 83 In only five of these are located 80 per cent of the aircraft factories, which receive 70 per cent of the billions of dollars in appropriations under missile and space programmes. That is where new and giant enterprises of the aerospace industry have been built in the past few years, including those of General Dynamics in Texas, Lockheed in Georgia, Douglas in Missouri, N. A. Rockwell and Lockheed in California, and Boeing in the state of Washington.
Two states---California and Texas---which get one-third of all Pentagon contracts, have a special role to play within the MIC.
California leads in contracts in the main military items: missile weapons and space systems (46 per cent of the total), military construction equipment (44 per cent), electronic and telecommunications equipment (21 per cent), aircraft equipment (20 per cent), and so on.
California arms manufacturers have to face sharp competition from their counterparts in Texas. According to the Defense Department, in fiscal 1969 Texas was awarded 17 per cent of all arms contracts, and California---15 per cent. Texas is among the leaders in the output of planes and aircraft engines, fuel and some other weapons.
In all the states which get the fattest Pentagon contracts the bosses of the AFL-CIO and the labour elite, act as the MIC's zealous allies and clients. The military use some of the funds to bribe the reactionary labour leaders. The big labour leaders are superbureaucrats with salaries ranging from $100,000 to $200,000 a year, and are reactionary, anti-communist and unquestioning supporters of the militarists' aggressive line.
In order to break down the antiwar attitudes among working people at MIC enterprises, the labour bosses resort to cheap frauds, demagogy and falsification. Their most popular methods are to claim that expand arms production, the arms drive and aggressive gambles abroad enable millions of Americans to earn a living, while any cutbacks in military programmes allegedly hold various calamities in store for US workers. This is an obvious echo of what the Pentagon leaders have been saying in their efforts to boost the arms business allegedly for the country's prosperity.
84The AFL-CIO bosses campaigned in similar vein when seeking to vindicate and support the armed aggression in Indochina. Of course, war has its dark aspects, they told rank-and-file Americans, but it also helps to ease the unemployment. They drew attention to the fact that from 1965 to 1967, the period of the most intensive escalation of the aggression, the number of jobs in the arms industry increased by nearly 1 million. But when the Administration announced its intention to reduce the number of US troops in South Vietnam, the labour bosses raised the alarm. They claimed that any reduction in the US military involvement in the war in Indochina would lead to a drop in the number of jobs in the arms business, so seeking to stir up discontent among broad sections of the population over any measures aimed to reduce the arms drive.
The Pentagon has not been idle either. The military leaders have been working hard to have the labour bosses blackmail the working people. For instance, in March 1970, Laird announced a cut in the military budget totalling $914 million at the expense of 371 defense installations. The next day a Pentagon spokesman explained to the US public: within the two following years tens of thousands of jobs would be abolished, California would have its payrolls cut by $110 million, and Texas by $62 million. The labour leaders were quick to make use of these statements to step up their campaign in support of the MIC. All the means of propaganda were used to prevent any reduction in spending by the US military. Labour-union support is very important for the military and the arms industry. After all, the AFL-CIO (with over 13 million members) has one of the most active lobbies in the Congress and in the country as a whole. In the 20 years from 1947 to 1966, it spent more on its lobby than any other national labour organisation. It was followed by the American Legion, another ally of the MIC. The MIC has many important instruments for exerting its influence and has a tight grip on economic and political life in many parts of the United States and the lot of millions of Americans.
By corrupting the labour bosses and making handouts to the labour aristocracy, the MIC seeks to demobilise the progressive anti-militarist movement in the country 85 and to induce in the minds of masses of people the illusion that there are benefits to be had from the militarisation of US politics and the economy. However, the US ruling circles have not attained their aims by orienting the country's economic life upon the needs of their aggressive line, and the waste of immense material, manpower and financial resources for the arms drive and the Pentagon's military gambles. The MIC's activity, which runs counter to the vital interests of the US nation, compounds the crisis of US domestic, military and foreign policy.
The MIC's vast unproductive outlays are the cause of the growing and unprecedentedly acute political and social conflicts in the United States: the runaway inflationary spiral, the patent inability of the US bourgeoisie to offer the people anything like acceptable goals and ideals, the casting about by the reactionary circles in their search for a way out of the impasse through risky gambles, and the opposition to the official line, which has been developing from local flare-ups to a massive and growing antiwar movement. All of this is evidence of the new political situation taking shape in the United States, which is latent with grave consequences, and of the deep-going crisis into which militarism has pushed the country.
Growing numbers of Americans come to realise the harm of the policy aimed to militarise the US economy and allow the military to spend money without control. Many are sure that the satisfaction of the MIG's incontinent demands over the past quarter-century has not at all transformed America into a military superpower. Although a large and ever growing share of the gross national product has gone for military purposes, the United States cannot assume that this automatically makes its positions more secure. Since the greatest technological changes have occurred in offensive strategic weapons, the ``damage limitation ability" per dollar of expenditure appears to be declining. In other words, while US military strength may be growing in absolute terms, national security may still decline.^^1^^
The sway of the military and the wasted billions have necessarily left their mark on the United States. The lack _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 238.
86 of control over the activity of the military leaders makes the US people lose their hope and faith in their government. Ever fewer people take at face value the official explanations about the growing outlays on defense being dictated exclusively by the needs to ward off an external threat. The failure of the US gamble in Southeast Asia did very much to make people sit up and think.In the present conditions, there is a growing anti-- militarist movement which is beginning to involve many sections of US society. Prominent US leaders have put forward proposals to limit the financial and economic power of the MIC and to reduce the Pentagon's budget. A. McGovern, Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1972, attracted the sympathies of millions of Americans with his programme for a substantial reduction in the level of military spending in the United States, and the use of the money so released for peaceful purposes.
In a book, entitled Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, Professor Seymour Melman of Columbia said that the US military budget could be slashed by---not to---around $50,000 million. Outlays of around $25,000 million at today's prices, Melman argues, would be enough to operate an adequate strategic deterrent force, guard the shores of the US, and participate in international peace-keeping operations.
The National Urban Coalition published an ambitious and challenging book entitled Counterbudget: A Blueprint for Changing National Priorities. It provides for a reduction of the military budget from 1973 to 1976 down to about $50,000 million. One of the authors, Robert Benson, who served in the Comptroller's Department in the Pentagon, believes that the US strategic force ``is more than big enough''. He proposes cut-backs on various projects, including the improvement of Minuteman missiles, the new B-l bomber, and the ABM system, and a reduction of outlays on conventional armed forces by $15,000 million.^^1^^
There is growing support for such proposals all over the United States. Many Americans are sincerely convinced that the greatest threat to the USA stems from its own MIC, an elite consisting of the Pentagon bosses, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Fortune. May 1971. p. Ififi.
__PRINTERS_P_00_COMMENT__ 8* 87 manufacturers, law-makers, labour leaders and reactionary scientists, seeking global expansion and fanning wars. Anti-militarist attitudes are becoming ever more prevalent in US political life.There is growing understanding of the fact that the role of military expenditures as a stimulator of business activity has worked itself out, and that military spending is increasingly becoming a drag on economic development, eroding many areas of the US economy.
That being so, those bourgeois circles which are dissatisfied with the arms superprofits of the monopolies and apprehensive of political adventurism on the part of the MIC bosses under the new balance of forces in the world arena have joined in action against aggressive US militarism.
The present condition of the United States bears out the conclusion drawn by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties which said that `` contradictions are also growing deeper within the ruling circles of the imperialist countries, between the most belligerent groups who gamble on extreme measures, on war, and those who, reckoning with the new relationship of class forces in the world, the growing might of the socialist countries, tend to take a more realistic approach to international problems and to solve them in the spirit of peace ful coexistence between states with different systems.''^^1^^
__NOTE__ Footnote in body is "-" not superscript "1". _-_-_~^^1^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, p. 18.
[88] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Three __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE IDEOLOGY OF FORCE __ALPHA_LVL2__ Cold War DogmasThe US military and their allies from among the industrial and financial circles have been vigorously intruding in the country's spiritual life and exerting a vast influence on its political climate and the mentality of the masses. Their influence affects the nature and content of Washington's official philosophy and the various doctrines and concepts meant to offset the ideas of socialism. The ideological activities of the military-industrial complex are varied and extensive and involve colossal material outlays. Militarist theories and postulates are being elaborated by many prominent academics, scientific establishments, and special ``think tanks" sponsored by the arms business. The military-industrial circles have enlisted the services of ideologists and scientists in their efforts to elaborate concrete foreign-policy operations for the US government, to carry these out and substantiate doctrines in theoretical and historical terms at every stage of the ``positions of strength" policy.
Imperialist propaganda has been using the most refined methods and the powerful mass media: the press, television, radio and the screen. Bourgeois propaganda is a blend of pseudoscientific demagogy designed to veil the dangerous substance of militarist concepts, and blatant preachings of force and aggression. These ideological intrigues have been recently moderated owing to the fact that the events of the past few years have convincingly shown the utter futility of US-led imperialist attempts to hold back the development of the world revolutionary process; that the Soviet Union and other socialist countries have scored great economic, cultural and scientific successes and have thus strengthened their 89 defence capability and enhanced their international prestige; that the colonial system of imperialism has collapsed; that the world communist and working-class movement against the aggressive policy of world, especially US, imperialism has become an invincible political force; that radical changes in favour of socialism have occurred in the world balance of forces, and so on.
Under the influence of these factors, elements of realism have been coming to the fore in the policies of many capitalist states, notably the USA. Thus, it has stopped its aggressive war in Vietnam and started to restructure its relations with the Soviet Union, but in class terms its policy has not and could not have changed: it remains an imperialist state and the citadel of world imperialism. The aggressive circles of the capitalist world have stubbornly resisted the healthy process of international detente and pressed forward with their arms drive.
The recognition of the principles of peaceful coexistence has neither eliminated nor moderated the chief contradiction of the present epoch---the contradiction between capitalism and socialism---and the ideological struggle between these is as acute as ever. Despite the improvement in the international situation, the forces coming out against detente and for a return to the cold war still have influence in the capitalist countries. In the USA, there are many groups of this kind, especially within the military-industrial complex. They want the arms race to go on and seek to exacerbate international tensions and, by way of subversion, to undermine the foundations of universal security and lasting peace in the world.
The militarists' ideological orientations spring from the expansionist goals of US imperialism. The MIC has geared all its activities to the interests of monopoly capital. The US militarists are more outspoken than other sections in the United States in urging a reactionary and aggressive line and opposing international detente. They have been very suspicious of the ongoing restructuring of Soviet-US relations and have been pressing for a continued tough line in respect of the Soviet Union. The forces hostile to the ideas of detente and international co-operation have yet to lay down their arms. They reject any prospect for improving international relations and maintain that military methods are the only way to 90 settle disputes between socialist and capitalist countries. The more frenzied theorists of militarism refuse to reckon with the realities of the present-day world and keep clamouring for a ``strategy of victory" over communism by means of mounting military pressure.
The preaching of force, the mailed fist and aggressive plans began in the USA right after the Second World War. America's spiritual life at that time came to be dominated, to quote James A. Donovan, by ``dangerous patriots'', men who exhibit blind enthusiasm for military action and are defenders of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. ``Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism that includes a zealous devotion to military policies and programs. It is an extreme militarist point of view which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power."^^1^^
The monopoly circles, the generals and reactionary politicians saw military might as something of a battering ram which would enable the US imperialists to iron out international problems in their own interests. Militarist ideology was seized upon, elaborated and fitted out with fine-sounding and pseudoscientific formulas at various levels---in the Administration and the political circles, among the generals and the learned lackeys of the bourgeoisie. A ``positions of strength" policy, they said, was the only line fit for the USA.
They came up with a host of absurd statements about a ``Soviet threat'', using that as an argument in favour of America's militarisation and a bellicose foreign policy. Donovan writes: ``For the past 22 years, the nation's and the militarists' enemy has been 'aggressive communism', the product of the world-wide Communist conspiracy.... The military, for its part, always has to focus upon a potential enemy. Communist aggressors are the most convenient, current, and identifiable enemy. If there were no Communist bloc and no such enemy threat, the defense establishment would have to invent one."^^2^^
The myth about a ``Soviet threat" was circulated to justify the US-initiated cold war and was revived _-_-_
~^^1^^ James A. Donovan, Militarism, U.S.A., New York, 1970, p. 215.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 216.
91 whenever the imperialists had to camouflage their aggressive moves. They saw signs of that aggression in the depths of the Indian Ocean, on the mountain-tops of the Cordilleras, and on the plains of Europe. But these attempts to impute alien designs to the Soviet Union cannot deceive the people. L. I. Brezhnev told the 24th Congress of the CPSU: ``But the peoples will not be deceived by the attempts to ascribe to the Soviet Union intentions which are alien to it. We declare with a full sense of responsibility: we have no territorial claims on anyone whatsoever, we threaten no one, and have no intention of attacking anyone, we stand for the free and independent development of all nations. But let no one, for his part, try to talk to us in terms of ultimatums and strength."^^1^^A point to note is that many of the US politicians and scholars who have given their all-round approval to the official policy have recently refrained from plugging the ``Soviet threat'', which was meant to justify the US ruling circles' refusal to continue the war-time co-- operation with the USSR, and their adoption of a policy of hostility. While on the whole approving of the USA's postwar line aimed towards world ``leadership'', these scholars and politicians have at the same time been more circumspect about ideological cliches like ``communist expansion'', ``aggression from the East'', ``Soviet threat'', ``the USA's forced involvement in the cold war'', and so on.
More and more US bourgeois researchers have been trying to take an objective view of the origins of the ``positions of strength" policy, emphasising the responsibility of the US ruling circles for the start of the cold war. Here is how the well-known theorist Arthur M. Schlesinger summed up these attempts: ``After the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the end of the Second World War, the United States deliberately abandoned the war-time policy of collaboration and, exhilarated by the possession of the atomic bomb, undertook a course of aggression of its own designed to expel all Russian influence from Eastern Europe and to establish democraticcapitalist states on the very border of the Soviet Union.... This radically new American policy ... left Moscow no _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, p. 36.
92 alternative but to take measures in defense of its own borders. The result was I ho Cold War."^^1^^Such reappraisals of the origins of the US ``positions of strength" policy, which are being attempted in the USA now that Washington's aggressive line has suffered some grave failures and defeats, show that the ideological positions of militarism are untenable and that there is no substance to the claims about the need to ``counter'' ``the Soviet Union's aggressiveness'', and the inventions about a ``Soviet threat'', which have been blasted by the USSR's consistent struggle for universal peace and security.
The most inveterate advocates of the US ``big stick" policy in international affairs have also had to reckon with the vast changes in the world arena, and so have urged the need to adjust to the new situation. Their suggestions, however, amount to making minimal changes in US foreign-policy methods, which would do nothing to change the imperialist, aggressive content of the US ruling classes' international line.
Strategy for Tomorrow,^^2^^ a book written in the late 1960s by Hanson W. Baldwin, military theorist and publicist, and a US ``hawk'' is most interesting in this respect. It sets forth a programme for expansionist action in the decades ahead, a programme tailored to the interests of the military-industrial complex. The USA, he says, cannot now bend Russia to its will ``without unacceptable cost and damage to ourselves and to the world around us.''
Having thus drawn the line to the futile attempts to establish the USA's superiority and ``a position of strength" which would enable the USA to reach the summit of the world, Baldwin suggests that in the final third of the 20th century the USA should take an active part---- political, economic and military---in world affairs in order to protect its vital interests and the interests of global stability.
He goes on to make a detailed survey of the continents and major regions of the world, describing each of these _-_-_
~^^1^^ Arthur M. Schlcsingor, Jr., The Crisis of Confidence. Ideas, Power and Violence in America, London, 1909, p. 104.
~^^2^^ Hanson W. Baldwin, Strategy for Tomorrow, New York, 1970.
93 as ``vital'' to US ``security''. The author of this military doctrine wants Washington to maintain an iron grip on Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the Far East and Latin America, that is, the whole of the nonsocialist world to strengthen the USA's military presence in every part of the world, and do more to build up the Navy.So, despite the present-day realities, the reactionary ideologists who have pinned their future on the militaryindustrial complex have yet to see the light.
It would be a mistake to think that the legacy of the long cold war period is entirely a thing of the past. The USA has found it hard to leave that legacy behind. The forces hostile to the ideas of detente and international co-operation have yet to lay down their arms, and have kept trying to justify the imperialists' criminal moves and work out various doctrines and concepts to substantiate the practical steps being taken by the MIC for the country's militarisation.
One of the more popular theses of militarist philosophy runs as follows: war has always been and will continue to be part and parcel of man's life. In their search for arguments to prop up that proposition, some US historians, philosophers, futurologists and sociologists have been scrutinising the past and projecting society's future with the help of computers and cybernetics. The ideological thrust of these prognostications is always the same: they are meant to prove that the USA's ``positions of strength" policy is correct.
Here is Baldwin's pseudo-scientific conclusion: ``Judged by the past and by any study of man, war, it is clear, is a human institution which is so much a part of our traditions, our history, our mores, our habit patterns and our instincts that it seems probable that some form of organized, armed conflict between groups of human beings is here to stay for an indefinite future---perhaps for as long as man."^^1^^ Consequently, he argues, war is inevitable and the USA's policy and the whole way and rhythm of life in the USA should be hinged on preparation for it, on a build-up of a superior military-political capability and the USA's conversion into a ``garrison state".
_-_-_~^^1^^ Hanson W. Baldwin, op. cit., p. 8.
94The fanatical opponents of communist ideology seek to substantiate and confirm their theories by resorting to reactionary philosophic and natural-science doctrines of the past and present, to the latest scientific discoveries and even antiquated religious dogmas. Human nature, says US sociologist Robert Ardrey, is pivoted on aggressiveness. He gives an arbitrary reading of anthropological findings and research in Africa and declares: in the process of evolution man was born of ``risen apes, not fallen angels" and is ``dominated by ineradicable animal instincts'', so that war is ``the most natural mode of human expression".^^1^^
This plainly amounts to ideological subversion, which is essentially aimed to mislead the public in respect of the true causes of armed conflicts, to slur over and blot out the responsibility of imperialism for the criminal aggression against the people's freedom and independence, to shift the blame for the bloody wars on man's genes and animal origins, and prove the futility of any protest against imperialist crimes.
The secret of man's ``belligerency'' is not to be found in his genes. It is imperialism which seeks to reverse man's evolution, to reduce him to an animal state and turn him into an unthinking killer, a pawn for carrying out the Pentagon's criminal designs. Social conflicts are rooted in the class structure of society and the policy of definite classes and states. Marxism-Leninism has established that wars are a social and historical phenomenon, and do not derive from man's biology or physiology but from the nature of antagonistic socio-economic formations. Imperialism with its aggressive aspirations is a source of constant danger to the cause of peace and social progress.
One of the US militarists' major aims is to condition the population and the armed forces in ideological terms so as to prepare them for modern warfare. The whole ideological campaign centres on anti-communism. But the aggressive military circles have nevertheless had to reckon with the recent positive changes in the international situation, the marked movement towards detente _-_-_
~^^1^^ Robert Ardrey, African Genesis, New York, 1963, pp. 323, 324, 348.
95 and normalisation of relations between stales with differon I systems.In these conditions, the MIC's ideologists have sought to veil the more brutal and revolting aspects of war by thinking up so-called moral ideals to justify murder. ``The `defence of freedom', opposition to 'Communist aggression', ... 'Ihe honour of national commitments and alliances', the 'defense of the Free World', and the 'preservation of world peace' typify recent objectives for which military ideals are directed."^^1^^
It was only recently that the Pentagon devoted much attention to a doctrine designed to show that thermonuclear war was ``thinkable'', with individual scientists and whole research outfits vigorously working to elaborate it. A nuclear-missile conflict, they assured, was not all that dangerous for America, provided it took the necessary preparatory measures. Thus, the well-known physicist, Edward Teller, attacked the policy of nonresort to nuclear weapons in the course of conflicts which, he said, was doing the United States a lot of harm.^^2^^
Herman Kahn, director of the Hudson Institute, was far-famed in the 1960s as the author of the ``nuclear escalation" doctrine and various theories and ``scenarios'' for an acceptable thermonuclear conflict. In his early works On Thermonuclear War and Thinking About the Unthinkable, he analysed various versions of a nuclear conflict, obviously seeking to play down its destructive effects on America. The USA, he estimated, could put through its plans for thermonuclear war making sure that the counter-strike would destroy only five per cent of the USA's 53 major industrial areas. With that variant, which was obviously based on the idea of pre-emptive war, the United States would require no more than a few years to restore its industrial potential.
Even if all the 53 major areas were destroyed, he said, the United States would still survive. In a fit of optimism, he plunged into the very depths of the `` unthinkable" and claimed that even if 100 areas in America lay in ashes, the country would still be viable.^^3^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ James A. Donovan, op. cit., p. 32.
~^^2^^ Edward Toller with Allen Brown, The Legacy of Hiroshima, New York, 1902.
~^^3^^ Herman Kahn, Thinking Abnut the Unthinkable, London, 19(12.
96In 1965 Kahn put out another book, On Escalation, describing a 44-rung escalation ladder (broken down into 7 groups) leading up from aggravation of the cold war to ``spasm war''. Nuclear escalation, he says, can be thought of in terms of an elevator in a ``department store with seven floors, each offering a number of options of varying intensity".
The lower ``floors'' involve various stages in the whipping up of political, psychological and military tensions, which results in a big conventional war. Then comes a local nuclear war. In the course of escalation, the scale of nuclear operations is rapidly increased and at rungs 39--44 these develop into a general thermonuclear conflict with strikes at population centres aimed to destroy the enemy's manpower and material resources.^^1^^
The political meaning of the ``escalation'' doctrine was that even under the current unprecedented development of the instruments of mass destruction, the US ruling class could still use thermonuclear-missile weapons as a rational instrument of its policy.
In the late 1960s andjearly 1970s, the fresh and marked enhancement of the USSR's defense might began to have a telling effect on the US thermonuclear-war debate. Accordingly, Kahn moderated his recipes for the use of ``regulated'' thermonuclear warfare as a political instrument. He recognised that the balance of nuclear-missile arms had indeed changed over the preceding few years and that the USA had lost its ``strategic superiority''. He was not in the least disturbed, however, by the collapse of the postulate behind the schemes of escalation threats and armed conflicts---the postulate of US military superiority. Having recognised the new strategic situation as unfavourable for America, he did not draw the conclusion that the untenable ``positions of strength" line had to be abandoned.
This solid ideologist of the MIC has mustered an array of arguments in favour of a sharply intensified arms drive, and has urged the immediate need to start- producing qualitatively new types of strategic weapons. He maintains that introducing new military technology is most _-_-_
~^^1^^ Herman Kahn, On Escalation. Metaphors and Scenarios, New York, 1962.
__PRINTERS_P_97_COMMENT__ 7---01462 97 important for the USA. He obviously wants to involve the United States in yet another round of the missile race, which would enable the chieftains of the MIC to obtain hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of allocations for the development of new types of weapons. Kahn was one of the most zealous advocates of a ramified anti-ballistic missile system. He believes that in peacetime an ABM system would serve as a shield behind which the United States could wage more effective psychological and political warfare and pursue a policy of ultimatums. If a thermonuclear conflict broke out, he says, an ABM system would enable America to escape its extreme consequences.The scale of the US militarists' ideological activity has rapidly increased. Since the war, special Pentagonsponsored ``think tanks" have been established in the USA to meet the needs of the military and elaborate various aspects of the USA's military-political schemes. These deal with general questions of policy and strategy and devote much attention to systems analysis, the ``military games" theory and the all-round analysis of the ``human factor" (notably, with the use of computers). In 1971, such research involved more than 12,000 scientists at 10 of the USA's biggest scientific centres, which were paid $250 million.
The Institute of Defense Analyses (IDA) has recently emerged as the Pentagon's leading research centre. It was established in 1956, when Secretary of Defense Wilson tried to use arbitration to settle disputes between the Armed Services over high-cost missile weapons, notably, the dispute between the Navy and the Air Force over the Minuteman and Polaris missiles. The Institute, however, could not play the role of arbiter, for neither the Navy nor the Air Force was interested in an objective settlement of the dispute. Nevertheless, the IDA's role in the US military-political affairs has continued to grow. It employs many prominent US theorists, and keeps putting out bulky volumes of research in the key political and strategic problems of the day. It has also carried on ``applied'' research for the Pentagon. Thus, it has elaborated recommendations for the US Army's counter-insurgency operations in Southeast Asia, analysed the role of US military personnel in the armed 98 forces of states dependent on the USA, and put out psychological warfare manuals for the Pentagon.
The IDA's leadershipwas verymuch opposed to a political settlement in Vietnam, and searched for recipes that would enable the militarist circles to carry on their aggression in Indochina for an indefinite period. One IDA report pointed out, for instance, that there was no need to write off the plans for an armed solution of the Vietnamese problem. The USA in Vietnam, it said, had shown undue restraint, and political considerations had often hampered the military and prevented them from scoring a victory in the Vietnam war. These arguments echo general Douglas MacArthur's calls for an all-out US offensive in Korea. Even at that time, official Washington itself qualified such aggressive action as untenable, but the ideologists of US militarism seem to have learned nothing from their past failures.
RAND Corporation, an outfit set up in 1948 by the US Air Force in order to promote the use of scientific, educational and philanthropic achievements for the sake of the USA's welfare and security, is still one of the major US research institutions. Its work is for the most part strictly secret. Most of its departments deal with classified material, elaborating strategies, developing offensive missile systems for the Air Force, and attempting to make forecasts in the military sphere. The conclusions drawn by RAND employees often serve to enhance the mood in favour of a more intensive arms drive among responsible US circles.
The Hudson Institute, which branched off from RAND Corporation in 1961, is similar to it in line of research. Many of its works urge the US government to devote more attention to the problem of the utmost use of the armed-force factor. At the same time, its researchers devote very little attention to research into the pacific settlement of international problems.
The Hudson Institute supplies its ideas not only to the Pentagon, but also to a wide range of arms monopolies living off the cold war and the arms race. It holds seminars attended by representatives of North American Aviation, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and other arms concerns. All of these have access to classified information.
__PRINTERS_P_99_COMMENT__ 7* 99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1977/MICU186/20070323/186.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.03.23) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ [BEGIN]The Pentagon ``think tanks" and also the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the George Washington University, and the American, Princeton and other universities (almost half of the 750 universities in America have foreign relations departments) carry on extensive research under Pentagon contracts into the ``social problems" of war and the politico-economic nature of the most probable areas of armed conflicts of revolutionary movements. The notorious Operation Camelot, pulled out in Chile in 1965 by the Pentagon and the CIA, was hatched at these centres. In the course of it, a search was carried on for men who were prepared to help establish political regimes with US leanings in the Latin American countries, and leaders whom Washington found undesirable were black-listed for removal.
Progressive Latin American opinion exposed the provocative activities of the Pentagon military camouflaged as scientific research. Operation Camelot had to be abandoned, but other operations were started instead in different parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia.
In their theoretical research and practical activity, US military leaders have always devoted particular attention to the question of ideological stability in the rear of the US policy of aggression. They have had to face this problem in view of the mounting anti-- imperialist movement, in the country, the widespread dissatisfaction with the sway of the MIC, and the aggravation of the social conflict.
The massive manifestations of the 1970s against the disgraceful war in Vietnam showed that more and more Americans were coming to realise where the country's true national interests lay. More and more people have been urging a limitation of strategic arms and prevention of a thermonuclear war.
Both the USSR, for whom struggle for peace and disarmament is a traditional line of foreign policy, and the USA, the Soviet and the American peoples, and, in fact, the whole of peace-loving mankind are equally interested in preventing such a war. It is the two countries' common interests which make it possible to create a solid basis for broad and long-term co-operation between the two countries aimed to benefit all nations and the cause of peace the world over.
100 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Pentagon's Propaganda MachineThe military departments of the imperialist countries, the USA in particular, have been channelling vast resources into the ideological conditioning of the whole population and the armed forces in a spirit of loyalty to the bourgeois system and hatred for communism. The aggravation of the ideological struggle in the modern world is an objective regularity and a reflection in the ideological sphere of the epoch's principal contradiction, that between capitalism and socialism. The struggle is irreconcilable and increasingly intense.
Militarist ideology in the USA is multifaceted and manifests itself in theories and concepts being elaborated by scientists in the service of the MIC, in the daily activities of the militarist leaders in running the US press, television, radio and other mass media, and in regular conferences, seminars and meets organised by the military in order to influence US opinion.
Propaganda is becoming an indispensable ingredient of the US ruling circles' military and foreign-policy activity. Now that the atmosphere in the world is beginning to normalise and relations between the USSR and the USA are improving, some of the higher echelons in Washington have put a special stake on a more intense ideological struggle.
The MIC people are prepared to outstrip the official circles in their daily and purposeful propaganda of militarist views. They regard the press, the radio, television, the cinema, ``public relations" programmes and various printed matter as af spring-board in 'Mie fight for men's minds and for the policies to be followed. Through a sweeping propaganda campaign, they hope to win over society to their side, to fan chauvinistic feelings and militarist hysteria in the country, and so secure approval of their foreign-policy programmes, which are alien to the people'? genuine interests. They employ the services of accredited apologists of imperialism, newspaper and TV men, to persuade US and foreign opinion in favour of political and military moves spearheaded against the socialist countries and the national liberation movement.
Before the war, the propaganda services were only small subunits in the intelligence departments of the 101 US Army and Navy. At the time, the major arms corporations carried on virtually no systematic propaganda. The turning point came during the Second World War, when the military departments mounted a broad psychological campaign against nazi Germany, and the news services swelled considerably. After the war, the Army, the Navy and the Air Force established special public relations offices under departments of the respective Armed Services. These offices launched a broad ideological campaign to brainwash the population and spread anti-communist propaganda, which essentially meant slander against the socialist system and falsification of the communist parties' policies and goals, and the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Under the false slogans of anti-communism, the imperialist ideologists persecuted the forward-looking and revolutionary elements, and sought to divide the working people and paralyse all the progressive forces. The black banner of anti-communism has now brought together all the advocates of the ``positions of strength" policy: the financial oligarchy and the military, the fascists and the reactionaries, all the ideological and political henchmen of imperialist reaction. The leaders of the arms business have also become deeply involved in ideological activity. The reactionary-minded military propagandists, the generals and industrial circles have also joined in strongly in the anti-communist chorus. They seek to discredit the USSR's Leninist foreign policy, its peaceful steps in the international arena, and the principles of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems to substantiate the ``need'' to intensify the USA's military preparations and so on. As a result, the Pentagon is now seen not only as a centre for working out strategic plans, determining the size of the armed forces and deciding on new types of weapons: the Defense Department and its associate institutions often come out with elucidations of foreign-policy questions and formulation of principles and lines of diplomatic activity in various parts of the world. Comparing the speeches made by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, one is sometimes hard put to distinguish between the two.
The Pentagon leaders often assume the functions of the State Department, issuing public statements on the USA's official line in world affairs. By the way, the 102 Democratic Administration under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson officially established the Pentagon's priority over the State Department in the business of informing the public about international relations. The Secretary of Defense had to present an annual report to the Congress on the military situation in the world.
A special directive issued by the National Security Council and approved by President Eisenhower in 1958 gave the Pentagon's ideological and propaganda activity especial scope. Under that directive, military personnel had to inform the civilian population about the dangers threatening the United States, the much mooted ``communist threat'', in the first place.
According to US military-political analysts, senior officers were given a lot of latitude on the means of carrying out that directive. The military-industrial circles seized on the opportunity and launched a vigorous anticommunist campaign among broad sections of the population. Ever since, this form of class struggle has been growing in scale.
It is virtually impossible to determine the precise number of propaganda personnel employed by the MIC, or the money going into the propaganda. At any rate, even congressmen who tried to look into this question could not obtain the complete data. Although from time to time some figures on the Defense Department's spending on ``public relations" programmes find their way into the press, the industrial corporations have flatly refused to lift the veil over their own outlays on the brainwashing of the population in a spirit of militarist dogmas.
From 1952 to 1959, the Congress kept setting special financial ceilings, which were being constantly exceeded in view of the Defense Department's spendings on propaganda. In 1960, these restrictions were lifted and have never been reintroduced. The propaganda spending has now rocketed: over one decade, it increased more than tenfold. Rough estimates made on the basis of the Pentagon's official data show that its various organs annually spend about $28 million on ``public relations'', but these official figures are obviously understated. According to the Twentieth Century Fund, for instance, the Pentagon's annual spending on propaganda totals $190 million.
103In their effort to brainwash the population and members of the Armed Forces, US military circles have vigorously resorted to the latest scientific and technical achievements, the explosive development of the technical means of mass information, which has brought the press, radio and television into every American home and has put virtually every person within the reach of ideological influences. The prospects for the near future in this area are even more impressive. The Pentagon men believe that the propaganda media are bound to play a steadily increasing role in policy and strategy.
The United States is the biggest newspaper power of the West. The US mass media play the leading role in the ``news market" of the nonsocialist world. Militarist topics are being continually plugged in many of the 1,500 daily newspapers, thousands of magazines and other periodicals being published in the USA. The country's two major news agencies---Associated Press and United Press International---supply information to virtually all the other countries, which are thus obliged to see the world through the eyes of AP and UPI. The radio and TV companies ABC and CBS and NBC are a source of news for millions in the USA and abroad, and are used as a channel for spreading the views of the military. Some US periodicals, like U. S. News & World Report, are avowed mouthpieces of the military-industrial complex. The authorities are in full control of the mass media. Various methods are used to regulate the activities of US propaganda, but in the final count it is always the men at the top---in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department---that pull the strings. The intricate administration machinery is used to supervise every aspect of ideological and propaganda activity in the country, virtually every major press, radio and TV outfit. This machinery is largely run by the MIC representatives. The Department of Defense plays a considerable role in administering the country's mass media. General steerage of the Pentagon's ideological and propaganda activity is vested in the Secretary of Defense, and the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, who has considerable powers, deals with practical matters in this area.
Under a Department of Defense directive issued on July 19, 1961, the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs 104 was assigned ``twelve specific areas of responsibility, including development of overall Pentagon public affairs policies and programs, security review for all Defenseoriented material proposed for publication, review of official speeches and press releases to ensure that they follow policy, and provision of news analysis and information for the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."^^1^^ The Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs is an influential figure in the Pentagon hierarchy, with the right to take part in conferences of the Pentagon's top civilian and military leaders for elaborating overall military policies, and taking decisions on the building of new weapons systems; he has access to classified information of the USA's intelligence services. He is in contact with the Secretary of Defense and his first deputy, and with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He makes daily reports to the Secretary of Defense on the press, radio and TV coverage of US military policy, and works together with him to elaborate plans for intensifying press campaigns in support of one propaganda line or another and refuting undesirable reports.
Apart from holding regular press conferences, the Assistant Secretary's office organises unofficial meetings between the Secretary of Defense and leading correspondents accredited at the Pentagon. He is in charge of the drafting of emergency propaganda and information plans for various contingencies, and operational plans for propaganda campaigns connected with the adoption of major decisions in the sphere of military policy.
The Directorate for Defense Information is the leading section of the public affairs office. This ``brains trust" frames guidelines and directives for the Pentagon's propaganda machine and issues all its press releases.
The Directorate for Security Review has to make sure that the Department's publications do not divulge any secret information. Whenever its employees detect a leak, the Assistant Secretary appoints an investigation, with the aim of preventing the spread of'true information about the Pentagon's activity.
The Pentagon has established a broad network of technical facilities for the mass media. The Directorate for _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., pp. 201--05.
105 Defense Information has a big office for putting out TV programmes, films and radio broadcasts, which are spread across America and abroad.The Army Department has its own programme for the output of films worth almost $1 million a year. Its film and TV output is being used by 300 commercial and 500 educational TV stations in the USA and 40 relay stations maintained by the US armed forces abroad.
Besides, outside the Public Affairs Office, the Pentagon also runs an extensive radio and TV service operating under the Assistant Secretary of Defense for manpower. Its programmes are presented as ``educational'', and are used by 323 radio and 73 TV stations in 27 foreign states and on US ships on the high seas. Nominally, these programmes are meant only for US servicemen, but they are in effect circulated in other countries as vehicles of militarist propaganda.
The Directorate for Community Relations operates virtually across the whole of the USA. It deals largely with advertising the ``respectability'' of the US military. With that aim in view, it organises propaganda displays, stages shows and musical performances, and provides speakers for various meetings and rallies. In Washington, for instance, in the course of one year, the Directorate organised hundreds of concerts by military orchestras for a total audience of more than 5 million. To advertise militarism, it has been using circus-type companies: the Army's well-known Golden Knights parachute team, the Air Force's acrobatic team, the Thunderbirds, and the Navy's Blue Angels jet demonstration teams. In one year, these shows were attended by more than 15 million.^^1^^
A veterans and civic national organisations division under the Directorate maintains contacts with more than 500 organisations, ranging from the Boy Scouts to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
The Business and Labor Division plays a most important role in the Public Affairs Office. It holds private or group meetings between Pentagon spokesmen and business and labour-union leaders, who discuss arms production, policy and strategy. The Division issues a hand-out monthly, The Defense Industry Bulletin, but the major _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., pp. 201--05.
106 deals between the military and the corporations are naturally concluded elsewhere, while the Division largely functions for the public and is meant to divert attention from the secret workings of the MIC.The Pentagon makes extensive use of journalists' tours of military installations in the USA and abroad in order to muster support for its policy. Propaganda tours were particularly popular during the Vietnam war, when hundreds of correspondents were flown to Vietnam on aircraft provided by the Air Force. In exchange, the journalists were urged to support the USA's aggressive venture in Indochina. The big military corporations have also organised advertisement tours of their enterprises. General Dynamics, for instance, once took more than 20 reporters to one of its enterprises in Texas, where it was building a new fighter-bomber. The result was a spate of articles in defence of the plane, although it had flaws in its design and eventually had to be scrapped.
The heads of the Defense Department devote much attention to the training of propaganda specialists. At Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, the Pentagon runs a Defense Information School, whose students are offered lectures and practical exercises in journalism and propaganda, and are given an idea of how the radio and TV service and the other mass media operate. The school has an annual student body of more than 2,000 servicemen.
Apart from the propaganda services operating under the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, the departments of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force have their own propaganda machinery totalling several thousand regular and numerous temporary employees.
The Department of the Navy has close contacts with 600 TV and 5,000 radio stations throughout the country, and with hundreds of other mass media units. In many inland US towns lying hundreds of miles away from the coast, the Navy's propagandists have been trying hard to spread militarist ideas among the population, using newspapers, magazines and Sunday supplements, the mail and'personal contacts, radio and television, advertisements, pamphlets, roadside boardings, electronic devices, and so on.
The departments of the Army and the Air Force carry on ideological work on a similar scale. The Armed Forces 107 have something like 250 radio stations and dozens of TV centres in various parts of the world. The bourgeois press is a major instrument helping to shape the political views of the servicemen of the imperialist armies. The Department of Defense has been putting out many different types of political pamphlets, books and magazines with a total circulation of about 10 million copies a year. Periodicals are being regularly supplied^to about 150 military newspapers, and 24 newsreels are made for the Pentagon and released every year. This and other ``matter'' is intended to impress on the population and the Armed Forces' personnel ideas about the ``liberatory, democratic and peaceful" mission of the imperialist war machine.
The Army Association, the Navy League and the Air Force Association help the Pentagon to condition US opinion in ideological terms, and play a vigorous role in spreading the views of the military-industrial complex.
These Associations have concentrated some major levers of political influence even on the top circles in Washington.
The generals and the businessmen have arranged a divi sion of labour of sorts: the latter are more active in mat ters relating to the award of contracts, to programmes for the development of new weapons systems, and so on. In these matters, says US researcher Samuel Huntington, the Associations ``are at times more royalist than the king. They do not necessarily identify more intensely with service interests than do the members of the service, but they do have a greater freedom to articulate those interests and to promote them through a wider variety of political means".^^1^^
The leaders of the military-industrial complex have carried out many propaganda campaigns aimed to push the Administration towards a political line best suited to the interests of the military, and to induce the White House to adopt decisions that would intensify the arms drive and swell the arms budget. Back in the late 1960s, the MIC staged a massive propaganda campaign to neutralise the opposition in the country and Congress to programmes for a fresh step-up of the nuclear arms race. _-_-_
~^^1^^ Samuel P. Huntington, The Common Defense. Strategic Programs in National Politics, New York and London, 1961, p. 397.
108 When the Safeguard project came up for discussion on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon issued a 17-page memorandum saying that all the contacts with the public had to be used to secure a positive decision of the ABM issue. The Department's employees had to prepare ``appropriate articles" for publication in the press, or help well-known journalists and writers to do so, to take part in making films, slides and displays, and holding conferences in support of an ABM system.A host of high-ranking military and civilian government officials, scientists and professors went on tour up and down the country in order to persuade the population about the ``vital need" for an ABM system. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers took their own steps to win over the members of the AFL-CIO Executive who had yet to adopt a stand in favour of the ABM system. The pressure on the labour unions had its effect, and the labour bosses came out in support of the Safeguard system. The only ones to oppose it were the automobile and aircraft workers' union (whose chairman, Walter Reuther, had earlier broken with the AFL-CIO and taken a liberal and pacifist stand) and the miners' labour union, which as a matter of principle opposed the development of nuclear power as coal's rival.
The propaganda services of the major arms monopolies, which were looking forward to billion-dollar orders for the building of the Safeguard system, were also active. They organised a biased public-opinion poll, which yielded an ``impressive'' result: 84 per cent of the population came out in favour of the system. As many as 355 public figures, notably 64 directors, or other high-ranking executives employed by the corporations that were to take part in the ABM programme, signed a petition in favour of the programme, which was circulated by the press at a cost of $70,000.
The Soviet-US Treaty on the Limitation of AntiBallistic Missile Systems, signed in Moscow in May 1972, met with a chill response among the military-industrial circles. Many Capitol Hill advocates of an intensified nuclear-missile race came out against detente and for a return to the cold war casting doubt on the urgency of that fundamental international agreement.
109With the help of their ideological and propaganda apparatus, the militarists have on the whole managed to maintain the US population and some sections in other countries under the influence of their dogmas. They have continued to ply the people with their ``positions of strength" policy and the USSR's ``aggressiveness''. Reactionary imperialist propaganda in the United States has banked on the absurd and utterly groundless myth about the USSR's ``aggressiveness'' in its attempt to check the positive process of international relaxation. But despite all their attempts to distort the state of affairs in the USA and abroad, the US people have welcomed the incipient improvement in Soviet-US relations. Many are now convinced that the two countries' clearly formulated pledge to respect the rights and interests of all states is a major step towards a radical improvement of the international situation, and has opened up broad possibilities for constructive co-operation among all the other countries. That is why some bourgeois ideologists have been doing their best to cover up the actual content of the policy followed by the MIC, to obscure the fact that it clashes with the fundamental interests of the US people, and presents the grave danger to world peace inherent in that policy.
The leaders of the military-industrial complex prefer offensive forms of propaganda to defensive ones. Thus, they try to inform the press as soon as possible about any moves they have taken or are about to take, are always quick to give their own reading of current events and refute any undesirable versions. While thinking over their decisions in connection with various aspects of policy, the military in the Pentagon and other US centres simultaneously draw up a whole set of measures designed to ensure a favourable response on the part of the public and the Congress. With that aim in view, for instance, they organise press conferences by the Secretary of Defense, his assistants and other high-ranking Pentagon officials, plan speeches by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Pentagon generals and admirals, and so on. Their chief message is the need for ``national unity" for the sake of ``victory'', propaganda in favour of new types of weapons, and attempts to justify the dangerous moves of the US military in various parts of the world.
110The 3,000-strong corps of US correspondents accredited at the Defense Department is always on call. A great volume of printed matter, photographs and arms advertisements are handed out to them every day and are used on the pages of the press. This slew of Pentagon propaganda leaves the desired imprint on the news coverage by the bulk of the mass media, even if only by virtue of its volume.
About 70 of the most trusted reporters have been entered on the Pentagon's special roster, and are the first to be informed about any developments at the Department of Defense. The leading Washington columnists and department editors of the major newspapers and radio stations are also in a privileged position, so that the Defense Department's journalistic elite totals something like 250 men.
The military in Washington's upper echelons believe that the information they spread should always be biassed, even to the extent of misleading the public with respect to the substance of the ruling class's policy. According to the much-quoted testimony of Arthur Sylvester, one-time Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, the US government's news media, have the ``right to lie" in national emergencies.^^1^^
A tissue of lies and hypocrisy is woven into the very fabric of the US ruling circles' policy, especially when it comes to preparing and initiating aggressive wars and armed interventions in the internal affairs of other nations, or stepping up the arms drive. During the long years of the war in Indochina, they carried on an unprecedented campaign of duplicity and crude deception. The then Secretary-General of the UN, U Thant, said that the substance of the US government's policy in Vietnam was shrouded in misinformation. He referred to various concrete facts showing that the Americans were being treated to a greatly doctored version of the military operations in Indochina, and that all the data were strained through an official sieve to suit the Pentagon and the militarist circles.
The US aggressors' hypocrisy and criminal action against the Vietnamese people were exposed for the whole _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 214.
111 world to see on the strength of numerous official documents, eye-witness reports, newspaper articles and research done in various countries. Especial importance here attached to the secret Pentagon papers on the USA's policy in Indochina, which were published in 1971 and exposed the dirty workings behind the planning of the criminal US war.Brazen lies were used at every major stage of the escalation of the US aggression in Vietnam. The Johnson Administration's decision to start massive bombings of the DRV's territory and to involve thousands of US troops in the actual fighting were preceded by campaigns to divert public attention from the real causes and dupe the US people, Congress, and bourgeois opinion. These official papers show that by May 25, 1964, the US government had already drafted a resolution providing for ``legal sanction" for an attack on the DRV. Soon afterwards, the USA provoked an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, with the scenario for that incident worked out well in advance. The North Vietnamese were said to have attacked two US destroyers in the Gulf, and on August 7, 1964, the US Congress issued its Tonkin Resolution, which enabled President Johnson to start military operations against the DRV. The infamous document can be duly ranked on the black list of history alongside Bismarck's notorious Ems telegram, Hitler's provocation against the radio station in Gliwiz, and other acts of plunder and violence. By virtue of the ``powers'' deriving from the Tonkin Resolution, the US Administration started in the early days of 1965 its massive bombings of the DRV and continued these for several years with increasing brutality. The US imperialists' aggressive act, however, did not crush the Vietnamese people's will in their struggle forj freedom and independence, although it did them immense damage.
Lenin said that bourgeois propaganda acted on this principle: ``...to lie, scream, raise a hullabaloo, and keep on reiterating lies on the off-chance that 'something may stick'."^^1^^
The US militarists have also acted on that principle, _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, ``A Partnership of Lies'', Vol. 24, p. 118.
112 both during their long aggressive war in Vietnam and under the present detente and deepening of the peaceful and mutually advantageous co-operation between states belonging to opposite social systems.Their lies and treachery, however, usually tend to turn against the US militarist leaders themselves. __ALPHA_LVL2__ ``Ossified Instrument''In an article entitled ``The Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Kautsky'', Lenin emphasised that in the imperialist countries ``...army is the most ossified instrument for supporting the old regime, the most hardened bulwark of bourgeois discipline, buttressing up the rule of capital, and preserving and fostering among the working people the servile spirit of submission and subjection to capital".^^1^^
Lenin's words bring out with the utmost precision the socio-political designation of the present-day US Armed Forces and the basic outlook of the US military and the monopoly capital connected with them. The leaders of the US military-industrial complex have a feeling of bitter hatred for the socialist countries and progressive ideas, and take a hostile view of the policy of peaceful coexistence and settlement of international disputes by peaceful means.
Some of these leaders, who made their way up during the cold war and now feel uncomfortable in the new situation, are still trying to cling to their old ways. They keep questioning the socialist countries' sincerity, trying to revive the bogey of a ``Soviet threat" and rehearsing Dulles's outworn slogan about ``rolling back communism".
They want to maintain international tension and build up the USA's armed strength to further their expansionist designs. Although their statements and actions can no longer hinder the detente in Europe and the whole world, they are still a source of worry for all men of good will. All the more so since the arms drive in the USA is still in progress, military spending is running high, big armies _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, ``Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Kautsky'', Vol. 28, p. 284.
__PRINTERS_P_113_COMMENT__ 8---01462 113 are maintained under arms, and numerous military bases are still intact.Although the US Armed Forces had their origins in a revolutionary political movement and anti-colonial struggle, the US Army has always been a stronghold of the most reactionary circles. Even after the victory of the North in the Civil War, the Southern planters managed to retain most of the top posts in the Army and impose their own views upon it.
The US army has traditionally been a capacious reservoir of reactionary ideas. One poll carried out to ascertain the political orientation of the Armed Forces' command echelon shows this very well. About 600 generals and colonels on the staff of the Pentagon were asked whether in domestic politics they regarded themselves as conservative, a little on the conservative side, a little on the liberal side or liberal. About 22 per cent of the officers from the sample openly confessed their ultrareactionary orientations, 45 per cent identified themselves as being on the conservative side, and only 5 per cent identified themselves with the liberal sections of the bourgeoisie.^^1^^
Fascist-minded leaders seeking to establish a military dictatorship in the USA have often sprung from among the US military. In the 1930s, some generals and bankers plotted to impose fascism in the United States. In 1935, Major-General Butler admitted under oath in the Congress that he had been invited to head the plot.
Since then, there have been several attempts of that kind. At the height of Senator McCarthy's witch-hunt, Colonel McCormick established a militarist organisation For America, which brought together the most reactionary men among the US military and financial circles, who were most outspoken about their fascist views. The organisation was led by some well-known militarists: Generals James A. Van Fleet and Albert Wedemeyer, and several leading bankers. Its programme boiled down to an attempt to eliminate the remaining bourgeois freedoms in the country and impose dictatorial rule. In foreign policy, McCormick's group clamoured for world war. In that period, the witch-hunting outfits of the military _-_-_
~^^1^^ Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 1960, pp. 236--38.
114 and the monopolies also ran a committee called Militant Liberty, which was sponsored by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford. Its slogan was: ``Victory belongs to those who are militant in their desires."^^1^^At the turn of the 1950s, there was a sharp increase in the ``danger from the right" and more vigorous activity by the ultras, who drew their strength from the financial, material and political positions of the top military and arms manufacturers.
It was only natural that the US reactionaries stepped up their activities in the early 1960s, for the events of that and the preceding period---the steady strengthening of the USSR's and the socialist community's might, the growing popularity of socialist ideas the world over, and the successes of the national liberation movement---had changed the balance of forces in the world and dealt a crushing blow at the proclaimed doctrines of America's almightiness.
US society was deeply divided, with the fanatical advocates of aggression grouping at one pole, and its numerous opponents at the other. Reactionary ideas were being fanned by the aggressive US war against the Vietnamese people, in the course of which the US militarists fomented chauvinistic feelings in the country and demanded that all efforts and resources should be concentrated on ``crushing communism".
Under the grave crisis in US policy and bourgeois ideology, the US military-industrial circles also moved to the right. Prominent US bourgeois historian S. Huntington wrote of the anxiety among these circles caused by the marked weakening of the USA's foreign-policy positions and the dashing of their hopes for ``world leadership''. He emphasised that the military find it hard to adjust to the new situation, while their disappointment induces them to lend an ear to the right-wing extremists.
In the atmosphere of grave crisis, the more reactionary and aggressive sections of US monopoly circles increasingly inclined towards a more reactionary line inside the country and abroad, and saw fascist-type ``strong man" rule and abolition of democracy as a means to restore the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., pp. 224--25.
__PRINTERS_P_115_COMMENT__ 8* 115 USA's economic and military might and boost its international prestige.Today, it is mostly the monopolies of the Southwest and South, that is, the major areas of the arms business, which look to neofascism. As we have already pointed out, the makers of the latest military hardware---missile, aerospace, electronic, and so on---have recently concentrated in these areas. The leaders of the military-industrial complex of the South and Southwest have been trying to dislodge the old financial centres of the Northeast from their superior positions in the US economy and politics by resorting to the movement of the ultras, which they see as a battering ram to be used against the old establishment. The leading Northeastern groupings also play an important part in the arms business and are not always consistent in their opposition to the ultras. They regard fascism as a latent reserve, which could be drawn upon whenever the political and economic situation aggravates. The ultras are chiefly sponsored by the arms corporations of Texas, California and other Southern and Western states, which are the backbone of the interests and activities of the MIC.
The right-wing movement is particularly active in these areas. Were it not for the support of the ``young money'', the Texan and Californian monopolies fattening on the arms sales, the ultras could never have gathered their present momentum, going over from McCarthyist outrages perpetuated by a fairly small group of highranking reactionaries to broad action across the country. During the 1964 Presidential election, the right-wingers in the West and South launched a frontal attack to do away with what was left of John Kennedy's ``new frontiers" policy. At that election, Senator Barry Goldwater polled 27 million votes. In November 1968, the reactionaries rallied round another representative of these areas, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, who polled 10 million votes at the national election. The notorious diehard, Air Force General Curtis Le May, ran on the Wallace ticket as the Vice-Presidential candidate. After the 1968 Presidential election, a conference attended by the leaders of Wallace's American Independent Party and various other extremist outfits decided to lay the groundwork for setting up a nation-wide party of US reactionaries.
116Most of the USA's 1,000 or so ultra-rightist organisations are based in the MIC's southern and southwestern areas, instituted as all kinds of societies, committees, fascist organisations of the John Birch Society type, ``crusades'', and ``conventions'' varying in membership, composition and slogans. Some of these have hundreds of thousands of members.
The Zionist ultras in the USA have also been engaged in criminal activities. The Jewish Defense League, established in 1968, and other reactionary Jewish organisations in the USA have long been a feature of the US scene, but have recently been particularly hostile to the country's progressive forces, staging brazen anti-Soviet provocations. One can easily trace their links with the country's most reactionary financial groupings and militarist circles, which have come out in support of Israel's aggressive policy in the Middle East. In Israel's first two decades, Zionist organisations gave Israel $4,000 million worth of gratuitous donations alone. The Jewish ultras also want the Israeli aggressors to have more assistance of every kind, arms above all, and have been trying to pressure the US government into supporting the Tel Aviv line of sabotaging a pacific settlement of the Middle East conflict.
US bourgeois writer Roger Burlingame has described the various ultra groups in the USA as a ``sixth column" consisting of ``self-styled anti-Communists who spread fear and suspicion among our people, who turn friends and neighbours against each other, who promote policestate methods as a substitute for judicial process, and who attempt to suppress free speech and free assembly".^^1^^
The loudest and most brazen of the US reactionaries and extremists are the contingents that are most closely tied in with the MIC. The bulk of the ultras' leaders, ranging from nation-wide figures like Goldwater or Wallace to the men who run extremist groups in various towns and countries, rely on the military and on subsidies from the arms corporations, using their aggressive philosophy and broad material possibilities. With the help of the reactionary military and their partners from among the arms businessmen, the ultra-rightist _-_-_
~^^1^^ R. Burlingame, The Sixth Column, New Ycik, 1962, p. 7-8
117 movement has been extending its positions in the USA's domestic and foreign policy and penetrating many aspects of US life.The MIC is something of a godfather to the John Birch Society, the biggest outfit of the ultras. Its members could well make up a small army, for the Birchites in effect operate as a paramilitary organisation. Their goal is to recruit as many men as possible and establish secret terrorist groups. The Society lays special emphasis on force and the use of arms, and has circulated among its members a pamphlet urging them to cache arms and ammunition and study the methods of guerrilla warfare.
The so-called Minutemen^^1^^ have been assigned the role of shock brigade in the MIC-sponsored ultra-rightist movement. The Minutemen did their utmost to ensure an election victory for Goldwater and Wallace.
The Ku Klux Klan also maintains strong links with the leading corporations of the South and has often been described as a subsidiary of the Texan military-industrial complex. The Klan's ``invisible empire" is expanding westward and northward, and its membership is on the increase. Over the past few years, its ``cross burning" rituals have sometimes collected crowds of 3,000 or more.
In most ultra-right organisations, the leaders of the MIC have remained behind the scenes, surreptitiously guiding the action and formulating the slogans and programmes of the Birchites and the Minutemen, but sometimes they operate in the open. There are some highly influential reactionary political associations consisting of businessmen and the military. The most important of these is the American Legion with a membership of 2,600,000 in 16,900 local posts. Approximately one million mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of legionnaires belong to the American Legion Auxiliary. All their measures, especially in small towns and rural areas, are aimed to instill into people's minds the idea that ``one _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Minutemen were a regiment of militiamen who were the first to take up arms against the British colonialists in the US War of Independence in 1776. They were said to be ready to turn out for service at a minute's notice. But the shining name of Minuteman has now been usurped by fascist thugs, whose slogans are consonant with those of the enemies of the 18th-century American revolution.
118 hundred-percent Americans" are superior to all other men, and that the USA stands above all other nations. The Legion, say its leaders, ``continues to be the outstanding opponent of Communism and other un-American dogma, and it is proud to be known as one of Communism's most dangerous and persistent enemies."^^1^^The Veterans of Foreign Wars consists of US servicemen decorated in military operations abroad. Like the legionnaires, they aim at fostering ``true patriotism" and defending the United States against ``all her enemies''. This militarist organisation has about 1.5 million members.
The Reserve Officers Association, with a membership of about 60,000, has stated in its by-laws that its objective is to ``support a military policy for the United States that will provide adequate national security''. When put into plain words, the formula means trying hard to foment a military psychosis in the country and calling for an arms drive. Senator Richard Russel said that the Association had one of the most ``formidable lobbies" in Washington and used it in the interests of the militaryindustrial complex.
The more than 1 million-strong National Rifle Association, founded back in 1871 by a group of officers, has now developed into a leading militarist organisation. Under a deliberately modest slogan---promoting the national defense through spreading ``a knowledge of small arms"--- the Association has been carrying on broad propaganda in the Pentagon's interests. Its members have been spreading across the United States various arms, from pistols to explosives, which the ultras use for terrorist acts against progressive leaders and members of the anti-war and Black movements.
The military have been using the Birchites and Minutemen and other ultra-rightist organisations to carry on sweeping semi-official ``educational activity'', holding regular seminars, debates and conferences in army units and among the civilians. Their plans devote much attention to such activity: the ``public'' nature of their `` educational" efforts enables them to advertise their most insidious militarist views and ideas through unofficial _-_-_
~^^1^^ Adam Yarmolinsky, op. cit., p. 206.
119 channels. Their conferences and seminars provide platforms for inveterate reactionaries, who urge imposition of fascist rule in the US ``war state''. Militarist philosophy amounts to a challenge to the country's past democratic traditions and attempts to set the nation on the road to reaction and totalitarianism.The pattern of such educational activity differs depending on the audience. Thus, an anti-communist seminar at the National Defense College claims to be ``respectable''. Its annual course for reserve officers provides for lectures on ``the fight against communism'', the overall international situation, and the USA's strategic problems.
There was a similar seminar at the US Armed Forces' Industrial College, where lectures are given by wellknown military men and politicians, who leave their audience free to sort out all the questions for themselves but make sure of driving home one fundamental point: that communism presents a danger to the USA.
In other settings, at lectures and conferences held at military bases and outside the big cities, especially in the MIC's southern and southwestern domains, the militarist propagandists let themselves go.
The struggle among the various trends in the USA's political life has tended to polarise and stratify society still further over the urgent problems of the present day and to enhance the distinctions between political views. The anti-militarists and the advocates of democratic rights have stepped up their protest against the growing sway of the military-industrial circles. The opposition enjoys massive support among the young, the Blacks, some sections of the working class and the intelligentsia. There is also growing ferment in the US Army. During the Vietnam war, for instance, there were many instances of massive refusal on the part of the troops to obey orders, and draft-dodging in protest against the US ruling circles' criminal policy which had plunged the country into a long aggression against the peoples of Indochina, was commonplace.
Some representatives of the USA's higher political echelons have been voicing their concern about the scale and content of the MIC's anti-communist, militarist activities among the population and the armed forces' personnel. The cause for their concern is that if the trend 120 to turn the USA into a ``garrison state" continues, the civilian leaders in Washington might well have to give way to the generals. A few years ago, Senator William Fulbright submitted a special memorandum to the Secretary of Defense entitled Propaganda Activities of Military Personnel Directed at the Public.^^1^^ The memorandum recalls the old US tradition of ``military subordination to civilian control'', and says that ``it is not the function of the military to educate the public on political issues''. Senator Fulbright admits, however, that things have apparently changed: ``I have now been appraised of the misapprehensions under which I was laboring. Apparently the constitutional principle of civilian control of the Armed Forces is indeed a subject of political controversy.'' To substantiate his conclusion, the Senator sets out numerous facts of military interference in the country's political life. He writes: ``As a generalization, the instances described in the attached list involve the participation of military personnel in programs on the nature of the Communist menace and proper methods of combating it. Under such names as 'alerts' 'seminars', 'freedom forums', 'strategy for survival conferences', 'fourth dimensional warfare seminars' and perhaps others...''
Senator Fulbright has grave apprehension about the content of the MIC's propaganda activity. ``The content no doubt has varied from program to program, but running through all of them is a central theme that the primary, if not exclusive, danger to this country is internal Communist infiltration. Past and current international difficulties are often attributed to this, or ascribed to ' softness', 'sellouts', 'appeasements', etc. Radical rightwing speakers dominate the programs.''
The Senator said he was sure that the US military are ``infected with this virus of rightwing radicalism" and that ``if, by the process of the military 'educating' the public'', the virus spread to the US public, the danger will be great indeed. Analysing the Pentagon's ideological work among the US population and the Armed Forces' personnel, and its consequences, the Senator laid even _-_-_
~^^1^^ Congressional Record, Volume 107, Part 11, July 31, 1961 to August 10, 1961, p. 14433.
121 greater stress on the danger of the military and the industrial circles' interference in the country's spiritual life.^^1^^No more than a decade ago, the honest American tended to brush aside any warnings about the growing danger from the right, leaning on the traditional complacent formula that an extremist movement could never enjoy massive support in America. Today, however, Americans can no longer be so sure, for the political events of the past decade has given millions of them serious grounds for concern over the real and ever-present danger from the right.
The militarist extremists, the movement of the ultrarightists presents a grave problem for the USA. Despite the fresh and positive trends in world affairs, conservative views continue to be spread among broad sections of the US public. The millions of votes cast for Goldwater and Wallace, the ``silent majority's" approval of the most adventurist decisions, and the solid positions of the ``hawks'' in the ruling spheres go to show that the danger from the right is no laughing matter. The worst thing about the ultras is not that they might eventually pull off a fascist coup in the USA, but that they have been poisoning the country's political climate, pushing it towards dangerous moves in the world arena and trying to revive the cold war atmosphere.
Their activities are carried on against a most uneasy background, as America's foreign-policy problems are being compounded with some grave domestic problems, like inflation, the Black movement, action by the young, the anti-war campaign and crime. The US aggression in Vietnam served to aggravate all these problems, whipped up the crisis phenomena, increased the dissatisfaction, and undermined their confidence in the USA's political principles.
The militarist actions, being stirred up by the leaders of the military-industrial complex, the unprecedented orgy of violence, with progressive leaders falling victim to the extreme rightists, the assassination of President John Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Nobel Prize Winner and leader of the US Blacks Martin Luther _-_-_
~^^1^^ W. Fulbright, op. cit., p. 14434.
122 King, the savage reprisals against the leaders of the youth, Black and labour movements, and rampant propaganda of misanthropic views have dispelled the illusion that the seeds of fascism cannot sprout on American soil. The US army continues to be an ossified instrument for propping up the rule of capital and the reactionary circles of the military-industrial complex. [123] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Four __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE MIC AND FOREIGN POLICY __ALPHA_LVL2__ Illusions of EmpireAfter the Second World War, the ``strength'' line of action to achieve the illusory purpose of US domination of the world came to prevail in US foreign policy. The MIC began to pursue a tough line of confrontation and armed aggression against the socialist countries and the national liberation movement. In that period, the monolithic bloc of generals and arms manufacturers, which took shape a decade later, was not yet in existence. But even then their positions within the state machine, the economy and ideology were sufficiently strong to enable them to have a decisive say in shaping US foreign policy.
The plans and intentions of the military industrial circles went well beyond the most expansionist programmes and conceptions being formulated within the US Administration as the official line in foreign policy. They had not only fully accepted the idea put forward in Washington in the early postwar period of world domination for US finance capital, but also sought to achieve these aims by special means.
For 15 postwar years, US financial and industrial circles were sure that they were quite able to make the other countries heavily dependent on the USA for a long time. The ``American Empire" sprawled across the continents. Among the methods used to achieve world domination prime emphasis was made on US military strength.
Not all of Washington's politicians had adopted the idea of expansionism and anti-Sovietism or shared the visions of an ``American Empire''. Some of them were wary of the incantations about ``hitting communism''. That is why the military sought to convince them in every 124 possible way that total conflict with the Soviet Union held no risks for the United States, for special circumstances had assured it of the capability of crushing the resistance of any rival by means of armed force and establishing its ``world leadership".
Most of all the US military relied on atomic weapons, the means of delivering them to any target on the globe, and the USA's territorial advantages over the other countries. In their efforts to dispel the fears of Washington circles and public opinion concerning their plans, they kept saying that the USA lay beyond the reach of and was ``invulnerable'' to any external strike. They issued vigorous calls for direct aggression against the USSR and other socialist countries without hesitation. A fierce campaign of harassment, persecution and slanders against the opponents of the plans for an ``American Empire" was mounted, and attempts were frustrated to switch the development of US policies and economy to peaceful lines, while a cold war current was funnelled into the country's spiritual atmosphere. The purpose of all these acts was to spread hostility among the American people for the Soviet people.
Bourgeois ideologists began to make extensive use of the idea that the capitalist and the communist ideology were irreconcilable, as an argument that countries belonging to different social systems could not maintain normal interstate relations. Special emphasis was laid on the idea that the hostility stemmed exclusively from the Soviet Union's communist ideology.
Among the arguments in favour of ``resolute'' action were references to the grave internal crisis which had gripped the whole capitalist system after the Second World War. In the developed capitalist countries, the communist and working-class movement had risen to a new level, while the political positions of the bourgeois parties had been weakened. Capitalism had lost some states for good. The national liberation movement in Asia and Africa was on the upgrade. Accordingly, the US reactionaries decided stubbornly to interfere in these processes.
The Truman doctrine of ``containment'' was based on the US ``monopoly'' of the atomic bomb and means of delivery and a military potential which was being artificially inflated to intimidate the other nations. The 125 sharpest edge of this doctrine was directed against the Soviet Union, the most advanced force of our day. US leaders were hoping to isolate the countries of the socialist community by building up their arms stockpiles and fortifying the reactionaries in the countries of the Western camp, above all those situated close to the USSR and other socialist countries, and also by making direct use of US armed force. The ``containment'' sought to entrench the USA's leadership in the Western world, whose resources and potentialities were being put at the service of US expansionist aims. This doctrine was geared to the global aggressive aspirations of US financial-monopoly circles to establish the USA's world domination.
The ``imperial'' orientations were an important instrument of postwar US policy as expressed in the `` containment" doctrine. That is the conclusion which has been drawn by prominent US historians, including not only progressive but also bourgeois scientists. Thus, two wellknown historians, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko^^1^^ have emphasised that the controversial issue in postwar US foreign policy was the intention to establish world domination, but the differences were mainly over the ways and means. Initially, economic pressures were used most actively, with some of them, like loans to Britain and other US allies, designed to establish their economic dependence. The two historians say that there was an obvious inclination to adopt the recipes coming from the most reactionary section of monopoly capital and the military. As a result, there followed a series of global acts with a patently militaristic bias: the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the establishment of NATO, Western Europe's rearmament and the militarisation of Western Europe, West Germany and Japan.
All these acts were effected behind the smokescreen of inventions about a ``Russian political and military threat''. Actually, the threat did not come from Russia but from the possibility of peace breaking out and dispelling the fears of the nations. The extreme rightists in the US politics kept urging psychological warfare against Russia because the USA, they claimed, could _-_-_
~^^1^^ Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power. The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945--1954, New York, 1972.
126 prosper only by converting a large section of the world into a semicolony, as otherwise it would be impossible to secure the profits which US capitalism needs to keep going.J. and G. Kolko emphasised that military strength was idolised in Washington, for the military leaders who grouped round the Democratic Administration were convinced that diplomacy without reliance on superior strength amounted to appeasement. That is why the task of US policy was said to be consolidation of US political, economic and---most importantly---military resources to ward off the ``communist threat'', and to maintain and support reactionary regimes and so stabilise the capitalist system.
Announcing this programme for combating socialism and progress at a joint sitting of the two Houses of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Truman referred to the opinion of military-political experts that the situation (meaning the positions of the local reactionaries) was especially critical in Turkey and Greece. Fearing that with the collapse of these countries, disorder could spread to the whole of the Middle East and even to other regions, the US President asked the Congress to appropriate $400 million in economic and military aid to Turkey and Greece.
The measures put through under the Truman Doctrine were patently aggressive, and were a source of apprehension even among some of those who supported the official policy. Thus, George F. Kennan, one of the chief authors of the ``containment'' policy, was taken aback by the scope of the military preparations. He objected to the scale of the military aid to Greece and Turkey because, he felt, this could start a world war in strategic conditions unfavourable to the USA.
The well-known US columnist, Walter Lippmann, also expressed apprehension over the demands of the military. He had made a critical reappraisal of the idea of US intervention for the purpose of ``containing communism" in any part of the globe, a foreign-policy line which, he believed, made the USA assume military commitments it had no way of backing up either materially or psychologically. This concern was also shared by some members of the Congress, who were quite right 127 in asking whether the Truman Doctrine would end in bankruptcy, having involved the USA in endless attempts to prop up moribund regimes by means of armed force. The columnist James Reston wrote: ``There has not been in recent history a bill that won such compelling majorities and at the same time produced so many disagreements and so much mental confusion."^^1^^
The odd protest against ``containment'' was drowned out by the chorus of US monopolists and military leaders, who mounted a country-wide militaristic campaign. The Truman Doctrine turned out to be the Pandora's box of US foreign policy, for it was followed by a succession of major US foreign-policy acts which worked a radical change in the character of international relations and pushed the USA into many military gambles and conflicts.
While the Truman Doctrine was designed to give the ``containment'' idea the required armed muscle, the Marshall Plan, adopted in June 1947, was aimed to bolster the economic basis of US capitalism in Europe, to maintain and stabilise reactionary bourgeois regimes in the West European countries and step up the offensive against the socialist community. The measures taken under the Marshall Plan paved the way for the establishment of the aggressive North Atlantic bloc.^^2^^
Having established NATO, the USA began intensive preparations for total war against the socialist community, and here had the support of ruling circles in other Western countries. John Foster Dulles wrote bluntly that the Pentagon leaders believed NATO was designed to convert Europe into a theatre of military operations and to secure definite strategic advantages, namely, bases in Greenland, Iceland, the Azores, and in the mountain _-_-_
~^^1^^ The New York Times, May 11, 1947, p. E-3.
~^^2^^ On April 4, 1949, representatives of 12 states---USA, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Portugal---met in Washington to sign thq North Atlantic Treaty. In 1952, Greece and Turkey were admitted to NATO, and in 1955, the FRG became its 15th member.
On September 2, 1947, the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance was signed in Rio de Janeiro by the USA and all the Latin American countries. John Foster Dulles said that the pact set a precedent for the establishment by the USA of the more important North Atlantic Pact.
128 passes in the Alps. For that purpose, Turkey, an Asian state, lying at the southern approaches to the USSR, was involved in NATO's ``European family''. Portugal, possessing the militarily important Azores, found itself round the same table with Iceland, which did not even have an army of its own. When recruiting the European countries for NATO, the US leaders decided whether a country was fit to become a staging ground, whether its manpower and material resources and military-economic potential were adequate, and so on.Having involved some West European states in the aggressive NATO bloc, US ruling circles got them to take part in measures aimed to create a ``situation of strength''. In January 1950, the NATO Council adopted the first joint plan, worked out by the US military, which determined the contributions of the NATO countries. Under the plan, the USA undertook to make available a strategic air force and, together with Britain, a naval force. The countries on the continent of Europe were to supply the ground forces. The fourth session of the NATO Council in May 1950 officially announced that the Supreme Command of the NATO Armed Forces was to consist of senior US officers. That same year saw the formulation of the principles of the strategy of a defence line moved out to the East as far as possible, and this called for the establishment of an Atlantic army consisting of 62 divisions, including 10 West German divisions.
The activity of the US military-monopoly circles in foreign policy largely caused the division of Europe. The Marshall Plan split up the continent economically. NATO brought on a confrontation in Europe between the two opposite military alignments. The Truman Administration finally trampled the principles of friendly cooperation between the USSR, the USA and other great powers which had been established in joint struggle against nazij Germany during the war. Had this co-operation been maintained, postwar international relations could have been organised on the basis of collective security and lasting peace all over the world. The US militarists had totally different aims.
The military-industrial leaders of the USA made use of their growing influence in the Truman Administration to push US policy along the way of aggression and __PRINTERS_P_129_COMMENT__ 9---01462 129 adventurism. While preparing for total atomic war against the USSR, they sought to provoke armed conflicts along the borders of the socialist community, to re-install reactionary regimes in the people's democracies, and so on. Thus, the Berlin crisis was provoked in 1948. The following year, reactionary circles in Czechoslovakia tried to stage a bourgeois coup with the aid of Western circles. The USA intensified its intervention in the civil war in China, and gave the Chiang Kai-shek clique aid worth $6,000 million. The war against the Korean People's Democratic Republic was started on June 25, 1950.
The Pentagon generals sought to use the Korean situation to intensify their military preparations. In this context, the bourgeois analyst Paul Y. Hammond said: ``The attention of the Administration was turned whenever possible to seemingly more important (if less pressing) matters, including the long-term expansion of the American armed services, and the acceleration of the rearmament of our allies."^^1^^ On July 30, 1950, President Truman raised the ``ceiling'' for the numerical strength of the Armed Forces to 5 million men. Within a year, came the enactment of the military conscription law involving young men who had reached the age of 18. On August 30, 1951, the USA signed a military treaty with the Philippines. The following day, a similar treaty was concluded with Australia and New Zealand. The USA gave special attention to militarising Japan. As a result of the Security Treaty signed with Japan in 1951, the USA secured control of many military installations for the stationing of its armed forces.
The US Strategic Air Command obtained its first major air heads abroad in the summer of 1948: the British government allowed 60 bombers to be stationed in Britain. A year later, following the establishment of NATO, the US military began to set up more bases in other West European countries. In the early postwar years, hundreds of Pentagon bases were set up along the borders of the socialist camp, in Europe and Asia, and numerous military bases in Africa and Latin America. _-_-_
~^^1^^ Paul Y. Hammond, Organizing for Defense. The American Military Establishment in the Twentieth Century, Princeton, 1961, p. 251.
130 The leaders of the Navy and the Army also strove to play a leading part in the Pentagon's strategic plans. Naval leaders placed special emphasis on the importance of aircraft carriers as a key instrument of atomic warfare. This struggle directly involved industrialists connected with the various armed services.Atomic weapons became the prime basis of the USA's strategic plans, and the build-up oLUS atomic superiority became the general line of the USA's ``positions of strength" policy. The men in the Pentagon believed that the USA continued to have a ``monopoly of invulnerability" and drew up plans for the most destructive war in the hope of conducting military operations thousands of miles away from US shores.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, US military-- monopoly circles were actively discussing the question of a preventive war against the USSR. They believed that the atomic] bomb together^ with the strategic air force guaranteed the success of an instant strike at the Soviet Union. Rabid US militarists urged the use of the USA's superiority to put paid to its chief rival in world politics, and demanded that the whole might of the US war machine should be used without delay to inflict the first instant strike on the Soviet Union. The Truman Administration's idea of a pre-emptive attack and the subsequent `` positions of strength" policy reflected the real plans which the US government had^jfor aggression against the USSR and the other socialist countries.
The Soviet Union's might proved to be an insuperable barrier in the way of the global aspirations of US ruling circles. Neither diplomatic acts, economic blockade, subversive activity, nor the use of armed force by the USA and its partners could hamper the growth and strengthening of the world socialist system. The Soviet Union had everything it needed---an honest policy of peace, military strength, and the Soviet people's unity---to keep its borders immune from encroachments by aggressors and to safeguard the gains of socialism. The Soviet people completed the tasks of the rehabilitation period in a few years and firmly took the path of balanced economic development. As the USSR's defence capability grew, it solved the atomic problem, so depriving the USA of its ``atomic monopoly''. US ruling circles found their __PRINTERS_P_130_COMMENT__ 9* 131 goals unattained, but at the first stage of its ``positions of strength" policy the USA managed to put through various acts which fortified its leading position in the Western camp while aggravating international tensions. Towards the end of Truman's Democratic Administration the reactionary military circles started a fresh spurt of activity. The reverses of the ``containment'' policy and the failure of the Korea adventure caused dissatisfaction among the arms manufacturers and reactionary politicians over the less-than-vigorous use of the USA's `` superior strength" against the Soviet Union.
They accused the Democratic Administration of being ``soft'' on communism, and claimed that the weakening ol the USA's foreign-policy and military positions had resulted from the Democratic Administration's ``tragic mistakes" back at the Teheran and Potsdam conferences, which had allegedly paved the way for the postwar ``communist expansion''. In the 1952 Presidential election, the US extremists rallied to the reactionary grouping of General Eisenhower and the anti-communist Dulles, who made no secret of their readiness to stand up for the interests of US monopoly capital. The MIC liked the Republican Party's electoral slogans, promising the most urgent measures to raise the USA's combat readiness, step up the arms drive, and so on.
The US militarists welcomed the foreign-policy platform proposed by the reactionary Republican leadership, which amounted to an attempt to extend the sphere of domination of US capital in the world by destroying the socialist system headed by the USSR. This policy of ``liberation'' was even more aggressive and adventurist than the earlier foreign-policy line. The cold war assumed even greater proportions. This was one of the tensest periods in modern history. The acts of US reactionary monopoly circles and the military repeatedly brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear conflict. The ruling party's leaders used the threat of world war as a means of securing the USA's foreign-policy aims, expecting to put pressure on the USSR and the other socialist countries, to break their will and determination to resist, and so realise the purposes of the ``liberation'' policy. The purpose of the ``liberation'' programme was the forcible restoration of capitalism in the socialist countries, 132 dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the ultimate fragmentation of the socialist camp into rival states.
The US militarists did not confine themselves to issuing war-mongering statements. They also tried to launch dangerous gambles. On June 17, 1953, the Berlin provocation was mounted against the German Democratic Republic in the hope of sparking off a tide of revolt across Democratic Germany and so separating it from the other socialist countries. This proved to be a great miscalculation: the working people of the GDR rallied round the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and gave a crushing rebuff to the mutineers.
In October 1956, a counter-revolutionary uprising was provoked in Hungary with the help of the forces of international reaction, in an effort to wrest Hungary from the ranks of the socialist community and to undermine its unity. The Hungarian people beat back all these encroachments on the country's national independence and sovereignty.
The US leaders spared no efforts in carrying on subversive activity against the USSR and other socialist countries. In the summer of 1951, Congressman Charles W. Kersten sponsored a provocative amendment to the Mutual Security Act providing for the appropriation of $100 million for a ``secret war" against the Soviet Union and the People's Democracies. This amendment was subsequently enacted into law, and dozens of intelligence centres and subversive training schools were set up with government funds. Much money has gone into organising subversive activity by the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. In that period, the USA's ``secret war" against the USSR'and the'other socialist countries assumed exceptionally broad proportions.
With the conditions prevailing in the 1950s, the USA was still strong enough to mount expansionist action--- plots, coups, meddling in domestic affairs of other states--- in some parts of the world. But within a few years the USA no longer risked taking such action, because the arrangement of forces had substantially tilted in favour of world socialism. Through the efforts of the generals and the reactionary politicians, the Baghdad Pact was concluded to complete the ring round the Soviet Union and the socialist countries, but it soon fell apart and, 133 following Iraq's withdrawal, was renamed CENTO. SEATO and ANZUS were set up. US imperialism organised the overthrow of the Mossadyq Government in Iran and the ouster of the Arbens Government in Guatemala. In that period, the US ``positions of strength" policy was expressed in gross and aggressive actions.
US military-monopoly circles cast lustful eyes at Southeast Asia, for the establishment of control in Indochina was beginning to look'important for their programme of ``world leadership''. Of course, Washington did not reveal its true motives, while US reactionary ideologists held forth about the ``defense of democracy" and the interests of the ``free world" in Southeast Asia. Secret memoranda published in the foreign press and consisting of 47 volumes of the Pentagon's ``Vietnam file" spelled out the aim in more concrete terms. It was to prevent Vietnam's unification on democratic principles through a free expression of the Vietnam people's will, and to keep Southeast Asia as a preserve for imperialist exploitation. An analysis of the Pentagon's secret documents suggests the following incontestable conclusion: the plans for the US invasion of Indochina were backed above all by the MIC. A policy statement, ``United States Objectives and Courses of Action With Respect to Southeast Asia'', said quite clearly that the loss of South-East Asia would have critical psychological, political and economic consequences. US Big Business insisted on controlling the area, which is ``the principal world source of natural rubber and tin'', and is rich in oil and other raw materials. It is also an important potential marketing outlet for the United States.^^1^^
The strategic importance of Southeast Asia was a strong argument in favour of US intervention. The real mainsprings of the US gamble in Indochina were the drive' for' profit,' which' was decked out in false talk about the ``defense of freedom'', and the urge to include the area into the sphere of the Pentagon's strategy.
By early 1954, it had become evident that French colonial policy in Indochina had collapsed, and that _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Pentagon Papers as published by The New York Times, New York, 1971, pp. 28--29.
134 despite the generous financial and military injections from Washington. Accordingly, the Eisenhower Administration did not hesitate to intervene in Indochina's affairs.The Pentagon papers show that under the Republican Administration an operation was worked out in detail and carried out to torpedo the 1954 Geneva Agreement on Elections in Vietnam. US politicians and generals set themselves the main task of preventing any elections because these could lead to Vietnam's unification under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. These instructions were circulated in a coded cable to various US ambassadors by Secretary of State Dulles.
But the point is that Washington refused to accept any popular decision aimed against the Saigon puppet regime. The Pentagon papers say: ``That the Eisenhower Administration's decision to rescue a fledgling South Vietnam ... and an attempt to undermine the new communist regime of North Vietnam gave the Administration a 'direct role in the ultimate breakdown of the Geneva settlement' for Indochina in 1954."^^1^^
The Geneva Agreement was torpedoed, and this blocked the way to a political settlement in Indochina. The Eisenhower Administration's policy laid emphasis on military means and armed force. The MIC's influence on the discussion of Indochina's problems within the US Administration continued to grow. Local puppet troops set up with US money were brought to the fore in fighting the patriotic movement in a kind of initial version of the later policy of ``Vietnamisation''. Tho dispatch of US troops and weapons to Vietnam was discussed as early as January 1954. US military strategists believed that they would need seven divisions with naval and air support to secure a victory in Indochina. When the question of US armeH interference was being discussed, Admiral Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set forth a plan for an atomic attack on targets not only in Vietnam but also in China.
Consequently, even under the Eisenhower Administration, Indochina became one of the central and most acute problems in US politics. The war sprang from the USA's _-_-_
~^^1^^ The New York Times, June 13, 1971, p. 1.
135 imperialist goals and was being carried on with typically imperialist means. Direct US involvement had started. The logic and substance of the ``positions of strength" policy made it inevitable that the scale of the intervention would grow, and that ever more aggressive plans would be formulated and criminal methods of warfare used against the peoples of the area standing up for their freedom and independence. The MIC leaders' growing say in formulating and conducting US foreign policy was becoming inexorable.US strategic doctrines were reviewed to make them more aggressive with the direct participation of military and monopoly circles. Preparations for total nuclear war against the Soviet Union became the basis of the new strategy of ``massive retaliation'', which was adopted as the USA's military official line. The architects of `` massive retaliation" claimed that their predecessors had squandered the USA's military potentialities, having been prepared to fight in the Arctic and in the Tropics, in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, on sea, on land, and in the air, with the use of old and new types of weapons. By contrast, the Republican leaders proposed the idea of preparing a well-timed concentrated strike at the right place. On the assumption that the USA had the edge in atomic weapons and strategic aircraft, and also a `` monopoly of invulnerability'', US ruling circles believed that total war was a real instrument of policy.
The architects of the ``massive retaliation" strategy believed that the pretext for instant obliteration could come from any incident involving the USSR if it was regarded in Washington as ``affecting the US national interest''. With the advance of the national liberation movement, the Eisenhower Administration's military plans were also ever more explicitly directed against the peoples fighting for their independence. This aspect of the ``massive retaliation" strategy was seen as a warning to the Soviet Union, designed to restrain any possible steps on its part to support the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The assumption was that once the USSR was faced with the alternative of total war and nonresistance to the aggressive acts of US imperialism, it would back down under US pressure.
The ``massive retaliation" strategy became the basis 136 of NATO activity. The 15th session of its Council decided that all of SACEUR's plans would be framed with an eye to the possibility of using atomic warheads, with the US Strategic Air Command and special US atomic task forces deployed in Europe being the chief vehicles of NATO's new strategic plans. For nearly 13 years, ``massive retaliation" continued to be pivotal to NATO's new military programmes. Only in May 1967 did a NATO Council session adopt the conception of ``flexible response" as its main strategy.
Broad sections of US public opinion and many leaders of other states allied with the USA in military blocs came to see the aggressive substance of the Pentagon's new plans. Even during the sway of McCarthyism in the USA, there was fairly sharp criticism of the ``massive retaliation" strategy, and US diplomats found it hard to pacify their partners. The adoption of the instant ``massive retaliation" strategy was also a source of serious alarm in Western government circles. In this connection, Canadian Foreign Minister Lester B. Pearson and other NATO leaders, speaking on behalf of a number of NATO countries, publicly asked Washington this question: Was 'instant' to be taken literally? If the answer was yes, would not the USA in the event of a crisis take unilateral action without consulting its allies? After all, in that event the Pentagon's military planning ignored the proclaimed principle of NATO unanimity under which no part of the armed forces committed to the North Atlantic Alliance (including US troops stationed in Europe) could be used without the sanction of all the members of the bloc. But the use of US troops in Europe would automatically involve all the NATO countries in a nuclear war in the US interest.
US leaders tried to cover up the aggressive substance of the Pentagon's new doctrine, but had no success. World opinion continued to regard ``massive retaliation" as an aggressive and adventurist strategy which could involve in a nuclear conflict all the countries with US bases on their territory.
In accordance with the ``massive retaliation" strategy, US military planning adopted a ``new line" with emphasis on the development of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. By the end of the 1940s, the Air Force (including 137 missiles and guided missiles mainly controlled by the Air Force Command) was set up as the chief armed service in the USA. It was being adapted to waging thermonuclear war and large-scale production was being tooled up for the manufacture of new models of bombers capable of carrying atomic weapons, whose stockpile continued rapidly to grow. In 1947, the Strategic Air Command was set up to operate as an ``atomic sword''. Spokesmen for the aircraft business declared: ``We believe that this nation's influence in international affairs is strengthened or weakened by the state of its Air Force ... that by exploiting the great versatility of air forces it is possible to gain decisive results in support of our national policies in all forms of international relations."^^1^^
__NOTE__ Missing first-line indentation in next paragraph, in original.The US strategic Air Command was advertised as a guarantor in any acute international situation, and in any war, whether total or limited.
The theories propounded by Douhet and Mitchell about ``total victory" through an air war once again became popular in US military circles. When formulating their plans of aggression against the USSR, the Air Force leaders concentrated on the idea of knocking out the nuclear facilities on Soviet territory. While the architects of the ``air war" did insist on knocking out military targets in the first place, an atomic strike would have above all hit the civilian centres and caused the death of millions of civilians.
In that period, new industries---aerospace, electronics, and so on---connected mainly with the Air Force had taken shape and were actively operating within the arms business. The men controlling these giant corporations gave all-out support to the advocates of the `` massive retaliation" strategy, who insisted on priority development of air and missile facilities for a nuclear strike. This strategy, the only effective one, it was claimed, was to assure the United States of success in a total conflict, while guaranteeing it against limited war because the Soviet Union would ``fear'' being involved in a local war which could develop into a total war.
Every year, nearly one-half of the military budget went to the Air Force Department. Whereas on the eve of _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Reporter, February 6, 1958, p. 14.
138 the Second World War, the Air Force, then within the War Department, had not more that 18,000 personnel and only 13 B-17 bombers, in 1957, the numerical strength of the US Air Force came to 920,000. By the end of the 1950s, the Strategic Air Command had nearly 2,000 bombers.This armada was geared to aggressive action against the socialist camp. From the end of 1957, roughly onethird of it was kept on constant alert and readiness to take off at 15-minutes' notice. General Thomas Power, SAC head, said in a book that its plans were based on the confidence of being able to deliver a nuclear strike first in any future air war.
The US Navy also had a big role to play in the `` massive retaliation" strategy. Naval leaders used the new strategy and technological development with an eye to the possible direct involvement of the Navy in an atomic attack and strategic bombing raids on the territory of the Soviet Union and other countries of the socialist community. The admirals claimed that the Navy could play a significantly greater role in a nuclear attack, and said the USSR could not be defeated through an atomic strike at air force and missile bases and other military installations. The way to victory, they held, lay through the destruction of the enemy's military and civilian populated centres.
US admirals and the arms corporation chiefs allied with the Navy put forward a number of theses to back up their claims to the role of chief armed service. One of these was the assertion that SAC's land bases could be knocked out soon after the outbreak of hostilities, while the land bases of NATO and other blocs along the Soviet Union's borders might not be used at all in consequence of unwillingness on the part of local governments to be involved in a dangerous conflict. By contrast, the mobile naval forces were less vulnerable.
The ``massive retaliation" strategy, which required a concentration of the bulk of the nuclear weapons with the Air Force and the Navy, led to some reduction in the role of the Army within the US Armed Forces system and this had an effect on the respective appropriations: by 1959, the Army's share of the US military budget had been nearly halved, with the Air Force getting about 139 60 per cent, the Navy about 30 per cent, and the Arm about 10 per cent.
In these conditions, the Army leadership and allied arms monopolies urged a review of the overall strategic conceptions, with most of the drive coming from General Maxwell D. Taylor, who had been Army Chief of Staff until 1959. He argued the need to switch the US war machine to a different doctrine which allowed for ``small wars''. From 1945, he pointed out, 17 small wars had been fought all over the world, and they had involved 570,000 US soldiers. His book, The Uncertain Trumpet, dealt a palpable blow at the ``massive retaliation" strategy. It was published in 1960, following his retirement over his differences with the official strategy of the Eisenhower Administration.
With the launching of the first Soviet sputnik, there was a growing demand for a review of US military policy. The Army leaders insisted that in those circumstances the ``massive retaliation" strategy was losing its effectiveness and retained significance only as a means of preventing total war. Accordingly, there arose the need to switch attention to military preparations ensuring successful action in other situations. The Army generals argued that under mutual deterrence the conception of ``limited war" had to be given a new definition with an eye to the possibility of armed conflicts in the NATO zone, something the old interpretation had ruled out. They insisted on the formation of task forces geared to fight limited wars.
These differences between the Air Force, Navy and Army flared up at a meeting of the National Security Council on July 25, 1957, when it discussed the US military programme for the 1959--1961 period. Following statements by the chiefs of each of the armed services and a heated discussion, it was reaffirmed that US policy was still based on ``massive retaliation''. The directive adopted by the NSC envisaged further emphasis on nuclear weapons and, to the dissatisfaction of the Army leaders, mentioned general-purpose troops only in vague terms. It supported the idea of a brief war and confined the preparation of the Armed Forces for the requirements of only the first few months of a conflict. It also adopted a broader interpretation of the ``limited war" concept, 140 which it said was a form of armed conflict taking place only in the underdeveloped areas of the world which small US contingents could cope with.
The only achievement of the Army leadership was the formation in May 1958 of the 50,000-strong Strategic Army Corps (STRAC), a task force which was to take part in the neocolonialist operations of US imperialism in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. STRAC's first operation was mounted in 1958, when some of its units were moved into Venezuela to take action against the inhabitants of Caracas. A few months later, STRAC units were airlifted to the US military base at Adan, Turkey, to take part in the intervention in the Lebanon.
On the whole, US military policy under the Eisenhower Administration was oriented upon the ``massive retaliation" strategy.
Towards the end of the Eisenhower Administration, the world balance of strength continued to change in favour of socialism even more rapidly, while the US positions in the military-technical sphere had weakened. Whereas for a limited period of the ``containment'' policy, the USA did have an atomic monopoly, it could no longer claim superiority in the development of hydrogen weapons.
It took the Soviet Union a very short time to develop the atomic bomb and to score great successes in making hydrogen weapons. In August 1953, the US Atomic Energy Commission was forced to announce that the Soviet Union had carried out a hydrogen explosion, something the USA was hoping to stage only in the spring of 1954.^^1^^
A Soviet strategic bomber capable of carrying great loads over vast distances was first unveiled at the May Day Parade in 1954, and this showed very well that the Soviet Union had a powerful aircraft industry capable of turning out the planes it needed to defend the Soviet borders and inflict retaliation on the aggressor. It was now clear that the Pentagon's material facilities were inadequate for putting through any ``massive retaliation" strategy. The USA's strategic capabilities increasingly fell short of the goals of the US policy of ``liberation''. This fact _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ralph E. Lapp, Atoms and People, New York, 1956, p. 149.
141 was finally driven home by the launching of the Soviet sputnik on October 4, 1957.The launching was evidence of the high level to which the USSR's productive forces had been developed and its powerful industrial potential, together with the Soviet peoples' capability of tackling the most intricate scientific and technical problems and fulfilling the tasks of enhancing their country's defence capability. The change in the world balance of strength, which the launching marked, was attended with important changes in the world-wide strategic situation, which ran against the United States. One-time US Secretary of the Air Force, Thomas K. Finletter, wrote: ``I know of no event since the Russian Revolution of 1917 which has so changed, for the worse, the security and power position of our country."^^1^^
There was a varied response among the MIC leaders to the launching of the Soviet sputnik. On the one hand, they sought at first to present the Soviet successes in space as being of no great significance in military terms, and claimed that the USA continued to have overall superiority, for no substantial changes in the balance of strength between the USA and Russia had taken place.
On the other hand, an extensive campaign was started across the United States to step up the manufacture of missiles and build up the fleet of strategic bombers and stockpile of thermonuclear warheads for total nuclear war. In the final period of the Republican Administration, the stepped-up nuclear missile weapons drive became one of its chief tasks.
On November 11, 1957, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were ordered to draw up a list of the necessary types and systems of weapons not provided by the main budget which required additional appropriations. On November 17, 1957, the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented the relevant document to the Secretary, requesting $1,500 million, almost entirely for projects to develop long-distance guided missiles, strategic bombers and air defence forces.^^2^^ That was only the beginning. In the months that followed, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Thomas K. Finletter, Foreign Policy: The Next Phase, New York, 1958, p. 23.
~^^2^^ Maxwell D. Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet, New York, 1960, p. 52.
142 US missile weapons were developed under a ``crash'' programme. Addressing the Senate on November 27, 1957, Defense Secretary Neil McElroy announced the decision to start parallel production of medium range Thor and Jupiter ballistic missiles, despite the fact that there was need to start full production of only one of these. At the time, the Director of the Defense Department's guided missile program, Holiday, said the decision was a ``gamble'' requiring a lot of money (by then only 10 per cent of the preliminary work had been completed).The USA first successfully tested its ICBM only in November 1958. By 1960, it had not yet reached the state of reliability which allowed its adoption as a weapon, and US specialists spoke of many technical flaws in its design. The development of a medium-range ballistic missile was fairly slow, and in 1960, according to US sources, the Pentagon did not, in effect, have operational missiles of this type.
Without as yet having any finished rockets, the US military command began intensive construction of missile bases, with the first one sited in the state of Wyoming. ICBM formation heads were also set up in California, Nebraska, Washington, Kansas and Colorado.
The Pentagon worked out extensive plans for building IRBM bases in Western Europe. At the December 1957 session of the NATO Council, the USA's European partners had to accept the plan for deploying US missile installations on their territory, and to abandon their earlier demand for ``dual control'', so recognising the USA's right of exclusive control of launching pads and nuclear warheads. The right to use ballistic missiles was transferred to the US SAC, which in this matter was responsible only to the US President. US military leaders were hoping to set up a ramified system of nuclear missile attack heads along the USSR's borders and to provide NATO with a missile ``sword''.
The first agreement on the siting of US missiles'was signed with Britain in early 1958. Four Thor and Jupiter missile bases were being set up on its territory. The Pentagon was also seeking to site several missile bases in the FRG, Italy, France and Turkey. It was also planning to deploy ballistic missiles in Greece, Holland and other NATO states.
143Thor and Jupiter missiles sited in Western Europe were targeted on objectives in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. However, they did not remain there for long, because their vulnerability, imperfect design and the development of more powerful IGBMs forced the US military-political leadership to evacuate the IRBMs from Western Europe in the early 1960s.
Through more intense efforts, the Eisenhower Administration managed to build up a reserve of missile weapons, but by the early 1960s it was not important enough to play the main part among the other means of nuclear warfare. The Pentagon rulers believed the way out was to secure a mixed array of all types of weapons, including bombers, aircraft carriers, submarines, army weapons and, finally, missiles.
Alongside the sharp step-up in the arms drive, the MIC groped for new conceptions, but none of these amounted to any changes in US policy to accord with reality, but merely to an adjustment of the military capabilities and their sharper use, and to a framing of new militarypolitical theories still oriented upon armed strength. These theories were set out in a number of books, reports and papers published in that period. Among them was Henry Kissinger's Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which was written within the framework of the Council on Foreign Relations, which put the author among the leading theorists of the United States.
Among the books on this subject which appeared in the United States in the later 1950s were: Military Policy and National Security by William W. Kaufmann, Roger Hilsman and others; Robert Osgood's Limited War. The Challenge to American Strategy; Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age by Raymond L. Garthoff, a Defense Department expert, and other works analysing US military policy in a situation in which US strategic capabilities were no longer equal to the far-reaching aims of the US ruling class in the international arena. The growing strength of the socialist camp and Soviet scientific and technical achievements were invalidating one strategic principle after another: the atomic monopoly, the superiority in nuclear delivery vehicles, and the system of bases abroad and aggressive blocs.
144That being so, the theorists of militarism argued, the United States could score the greatest successes in foreign policy not by relying on total war as a means of achieving any goal, but by using armed force commensurate with the magnitude and importance of the foreign-policy goal. Force should be used in doses and stages, depending on the enemy's resistance. The advantage would go to the side with the potentialities for organising and mounting military operations on a local, non-global scale, that is, ``limited'' or ``small'' wars. Among the practical results of military effort could be the retreat and political or military surrender of a potential enemy on a local scale.
Although these views signified a critical reappraisal of the ``massive retaliation" strategy, their authors insisted on continued intensive preparations for total nuclear war. ``Massive retaliation'', with its stake on total war, was merely being supplemented with the doctrine of ``small wars" aimed both against the countries of the socialist community and the newly liberated countries or those fighting for their liberation from colonial oppression.
The MIC leaders insisted on making US strategy even more aggressive and sought to convince the public that the ``small wars" doctrine, which was being put forward as a supplement to ``massive retaliation'', would not increase the danger of a big war, but would, on the contrary, make it possible to control local conflicts and so prevent them from developing into a total bloodbath.
They claimed that this could be done if the parties agreed in advance to use tactical atomic weapons only. However, there was no consensus on what ``tactical'' meant.
Theoretical attempts were made to ``limit'' local wars to given areas and to prevent their growing into a worldwar.
The authors of the ``small wars" doctrine suggested that in the course of an atomic attack there should be a distinction between military and civilian targets, and that big cities without military objectives should be safeguarded against atomic attack.
They suggested a whole system for regulating `` limited" atomic conflicts and declared that any atomic conflict should run in accordance with the US rules, so that the other side must unconditionally accept the terms of warfare put forward by the USA. Otherwise, the USA refused to abide by any ``limitations''. ``Any restriction __PRINTERS_P_145_COMMENT__ 10---01462 145 is useful and desirable to the extent that it contributes to the preservation of American Society as a stable yet dynamic institution."^^1^^
The main aim of US theoretical disquisitions in the late 1950s was to use war as a real instrument of the ``liberation'' policy which the US ruling class continued to pursue under the new balance of world forces. These turned out to be futile. More and more people in the United States came to realise that any ``local'' atomic action against the Soviet Union, which was in possession of every type of weapon, would inevitably have catastrophic consequences for the USA. Towards the very end of the 1950s, military circles in Washington reached the conclusion that it was hopeless to seek to contain any atomic conflict ``within limits'', and abandoned the ``small atomic wars" doctrine, but continued to work out theories of non-atomic conflict below the threshold of total war.
The doctrines of the first stage of the US ``positions of strength" policy shaped the Ub foreign policy line as militaristic and dangerous to peace. The ``containment'' and ``liberation'' doctrines and the Pentagon's attendant strategic ideas had become a thing of the past, but the anticommunism and hostility for the Soviet Union and the forces of social progress which aggressive US circles had injected into US policy in that period continued to exert an influence on the doings of the US ruling elite.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Collapse of the Messianic ConceptionIn the late 1950s and early 1960s, the period of US expansion gave way to a new period in the course of which the US ruling class had to think more about retaining what it had achieved rather than of further extending the boundaries of the ``American Empire''. Of course, US imperialism was not in any sense abandoning the attempts to spread its influence to new areas of the world or to make other nations then lying beyond the reach of the greedy appetites of US capital dependent on the US monopolies.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Military Policy and National Security, ed. by William W. Kaufmann, New Jersey, 1956, p. 109.
146In his Inaugural Address on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy declared: ``We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'' This declaration, like various other public statements by Kennedy and Johnson about ``America's leadership in the struggle for liberty" revealed the aggressive aspirations of imperialism and the urge to step up the light against the ideas of communism and national liberation. They borrowed a great deal from the political philosophy and practices of earlier administrations. Besides, Eisenhower's Republican Administration had deeply involved the Democratic Administration which came after it in the crisis situation in the Indochina, over Cuba, and on the German issue, and left it as a legacy the notorious declaration about liberating the ``captive nations".
At the same time, the main concern of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations in the 1960s in the atmosphere of grave crisis of world capitalism was to maintain the US spheres of influence abroad, prevent any weakening of the capitalist system and keep within it the nations seeking to switch to independent and progressive development. The leaders of US imperialism had above all to concern themselves with defence in face of the historical strengthening of the forces of social progress.
They formulated the ``maintenance of the world forces equilibrium" doctrine as the starting point for US activity in the international arena. It said that the existing balance of strength between the socialist community and the Western bloc had to be frozen, for any further change against the USA, including any further withdrawal of African or Asian countries from the Western bloc, jeopardised US national security.
In other words, the US leaders suggested the idea of freezing the status quo in an effort to dam the tide of historical progress. The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations appeared to be inviting the Soviet Union to act from an implicit agreement to maintain the ``status quo" and demanded that the USSR should hold aloof from support of the anti-imperialist movement in the young countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
But the Democratic Administration leaders were also forced to reckon with the unfavourable situation taking __PRINTERS_P_146_COMMENT__ 10* 147 shape in the world and to make the necessary adjustments in their foreign-policy views and practical acts in the international arena.
Whereas earlier administrations had, in effect, reduced relations between the USA and the USSR to a naked armed confrontation and balance of military strength, the Democratic Administration had to diversify these relations, supplementing military methods with diplomatic and economic instruments within the framework of intense but peaceful competition. Kennedy's book, The Strategy of Peace, which was published at the height of the electoral campaign in 1960, emphasised, in particular, that the two sides had an interest in averting nuclear war. The new positive elements in the Kennedy Administration's policy drew sharp resistance from the MIC and all the reactionary forces in the United States. This explains the rise in the early 1960s of ultra-rightist and militarist movements in the country. The aggressive circles of Big Business and reactionary politicians protested against any departures from the policy of hostility for the Soviet Union, from the bankrupt line of US monopoly capital aimed to establish world domination. They demanded a continuation of the line at any price, and frequently got their way. Thus, the Kennedy Administration (and the Johnson Administration to an even greater extent) succumbed to pressures from the right and met the demands of the militarists and the reactionaries. As a result, US foreign and military policy throughout the 1960s was contradictory, inconsistent, and a danger to world peace.
The 1962 Caribbean crisis---the most dangerous complication of the international situation in the recent period--- resulted from the provocative activity of the reactionary section of US business, the military and the right-wing of US politicians. The Pentagon and the reactionary leaders of the US monopolies supporting it demanded that the government should take ``resolute'' and essentially adventurist action to intimidate the Soviet Union by force. A rumour was circulated that the ``missile gap" would be eliminated by the summer of 1962, and that the US nuclear missile potential had been markedly fortified, which was why it was not right to miss the opportunity of staging a ``trial of wills" in an area that was 148 strategically advantageous for the USA and lay tens of thousands of kilometres away from the Soviet Union.
Stepped up concentration of large naval, air, paratrooper and marine units was started at the approaches to Cuba. Reinforcements were sent in to the US military base at Guantanamo. The US Department of Defense announced large-scale naval manoeuvres in the Caribbean. On October 22, President Kennedy announced the establishment of the blockade of Cuba. The US Armed Forces and the NATO troops were put on combat alert. The world faced the threat of a thermonuclear war.
This was prevented chiefly through the Soviet Union's flexible steps to preserve the peace. The lessons of the Cuba crisis and the role of the militarist circles in provoking it were not lost on the United States and its leading circles. For Kennedy the Caribbean events marked the starting point in a reappraisal of US foreign policy. His feelings underwent a qualitative change after Cuba: ``A world in which nations threatened each other with nuclear weapons now seemed to him not just an irrational but an intolerable and impossible world.... So his first instinct after the missile crisis had been to restore communication with his adversary and resume the search for areas of common interest."^^1^^
On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy delivered his well-known speech at the American University in Washington, D.C., which was something of an official declaration of the need for peaceful coexistence. He said: ``I am talking about genuine peace.... I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces.''
However, the MIC bosses drew a set of different conclusions. After the Cuba crisis, the aggressive groupings insisted that these events had been the turning point at which world development, which had tended to be unfavourable for the USA, was reversed. Of course, there were no grounds for such conclusions. The Soviet Union continued to have the initiative and the balance of world forces kept steadily tilting in favour of socialism. But _-_-_
~^^1^^ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days. John F. Kennedy in the White House, Boston, 1965, pp. 889, 893.
149 the US militarists had no use for the facts. They sought to channel into the course of aggressive action the policy of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was installed at the White House following the tragedy at Dallas. The very first foreign policy acts of President Johnson clearly showed the influence of the militaristic circles. In late 1964 and early 1965, fresh elements of brutality, aggressiveness and unwillingness to reckon with reality began to stand out in US policy. The ideas of the extreme right-wing were largely consonant with those of the President himself, who hinted at Kennedy's ``passiveness'' and made it quite clear that he would not allow any departure from the hard line and would not be seduced by any liberal ``nonsense'' in politics. Kennedy's idea that America's strength ``had its limits" in exerting an influence on international development was discarded as not being in accord with the purposes of US policy.Many of Johnson's statements contained declarations about the USA's mission of leadership, and these were in line with the interests of US finance capital and the military elite.
Apart from fighting ``Soviet communism'', the leaders of Big Business set themselves as the primary task suppression of the national liberation movement in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. US monopolies plundering many Third World nations, and Pentagon generals with visions of converting the countries of the area into bridgeheads for their strategic plans, sounded the alarm over the steep upsurge in the liberation movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was decided to regard the national liberation movement as a modern type of communist movement. It was emphasised that the United States was prepared to go to extremes in fighting it. World peace was impossible, they claimed, if internal social changes, the class struggle and civil wars continued.
Faced with a real prospect of losing the sources of many of their profits in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the US monopolies intensified their pressure on the Administration, urging it to pursue a blatantly colonial policy. A set of doctrines was formulated for various parts of the globe, all implying the following: regardless of international agreements or opinion on these issues heWby the USA's allies, it was prepared to use any means, 150 including armed force to fight the liberation movements. Together with the British and the Belgians, the US imperi'.ilists mounted a joint intervention in the Confo in Intp 1964, in an effort to stamp out the national liberation movement in the area. Reactionary US circles kept a close watch on developments in other parts of Africa and collaborated with the Portuguese colonialists, and the Rhodesian and South African racists.
US military leaders, above all those connected with Zionist circles, insisted on conducting an unconditional pro-Israeli line on the Middle East issue. It goes without saying that the Israeli leading circles had direct militarypolitical support from the USA when hazarding their aggression against the Arab countries in July 1967 and sabotaging the political settlement in the Middle East in the subsequent period.
A particular source of alarm for US monopoly circles was the development of national movements in Latin America, which they wanted to maintain as their own backyard. Accordingly, on April 28, 1965, US marines were sent to the Dominican Republic to suppress the patriotic movement in the country and install a dictatorship suitable for the US monopolies.
The MIC leaders relied on force and the USA's technical superiority in the military field, holding their nuclear missile weapons as the main element in their political contest with the Soviet Union. They allowed for the possibility of using nuclear missile weapons, even though they realised their suicidal character, as an extreme measure in a number of situations. Hence, the demand for maximum attention to nuclear missile weapons, whose intensive stockpiling continued to be the main plank of the military programmes throughout the 1960s.
There was approval in Washington of the demands by the monopolies and the military for an effort through the utmost mobilisation of resources and an inflated government budget not only to overcome the US missile lag, but also to build up, in the very first years of the Democratic Administration, a reserve for the future. The idea was to secure US superiority in the latest types of military weapons and to base its relations with the USSR and other countries of the world on ``positions of strength". 151 Military spending was sharply increased and work was started on modern types of weapons, with the arms drive assuming even greater proportions than it had under the Republican Administration.
In his first Address to the Congress in January 1961, President Kennedy announced the decision to take urgent measures to step up programmes for building Polaris submarines and intercontinental hard-fuel Minuteman missiles. By the end of the Democratic Administration, these missiles accounted for over 40 per cent of the US Strategic Forces. In March 1961, military expenditures were increased by $2,000 million, and within a few months the Defense Department's budget was further increased by something like $3,500 million. The numerical strength of the US Armed Forces was increased by another 342,000 men, and the number of reservists drafted into the army was increased two- to threefold. The dismantling of many warships and aircraft was suspended. US military circles were deliberately seeking a dangerous aggravation of the international situation in the hope of reversing the unfavourable world developments and seizing the initiative.
The use of armed force as an instrument of international policy in the 1960s was planned by the US leadership in accordance with the ``flexible response" strategy, which was approved at a special sitting of the National Security Council in January 1962 as the USA's official military doctrine. This strategy contained within itself these three main elements: preparation for thermonuclear war, the ``limited wars" conception, and plans for socalled ``special'' or ``counter-insurgency'' wars.
In this way, the US fdreign-policy programmes were being underpinned by a broader strategic base, as compared with that under ``massive retaliation''. This expressed the urge of the US military-political leadership to adjust to a more diverse world situation of the 1960s. The missile monopolies had an important role to play in the formulation and adoption of the ``flexible response" strategy. The switch of the US war machine to the preparation of limited and counter-insurgency wars, alongside the thermonuclear drive, opened up the broadest opportunities for corporations manufacturing non-atomic weapons and equipment for conventional warfare. All 152 those involved in the MIC had a solid stake in the most vigorous action in the international arena in the spirit of ``flexible response".
Initially those who were connected with the aerospace industry expressed the fear that orientation upon limited and counter-insurgency wars would relax attention to a big nuclear war and so minimise the role of nuclear missile weapons in US military policy. Defense Secretary McNamara rejected these fears, while AttorneyGeneral Robert Kennedy declared that thermonuclear weapons remained the most important element of US policy and that the USA was prepared to use thermonuclear bombs of any size and in any quantity. This explanation came from the highest Washington spheres: the new US military policy was still pivoted on the ``massive retaliation" concept, while the build-up of conventional armaments did not in any way affect the big nuclear war arsenals but was being carried on through additional efforts.
This gave a virtually free hand to the giant corporations manufacturing strategic nuclear weapons and Pentagon leaders working on plans for the possible use of these weapons. All the restraints on the nuclear weapons drive were lifted.
From time to time, attempts were made in US government circles (especially under McNamara, who was inclined to rationalisation) to estimate the number of nuclear missile weapons required to secure ``guaranteed penetration''. But every figure was claimed to be inadequate and was superseded by higher ones. But even this impracticable attempt to put a ceiling on nuclear weapons stockpiles evoked resistance from the MIC leaders, who continued to seek nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union and insisted on whipping up the already unbridled arms drive.
US business magnates had far-reaching visions in connection with the prospect of establishing an anti-- ballistic missile system, that had been fairly extensively discussed in practical terms even under the Kennedy Administration. In 1963, the USA started to develop the Nike X ABM system. In the following years, the USA switched to an improved system. On September 18, 1967, came the announcement that the US government 153 had decided to deploy a ``thin'', that is, a partial, ABM system. With the active support of reactionary Congressmen and other Washington politicians, the MTC was pushing the United States into a new and even more hazardous and costly turn of the strategic arms spiral. The Johnson Administration failed to take a final decision on the ABM system, and it continued to be the subject of sharp debate under the Nixon Administration.
Although the theorists of militarism insisted that even in the conditions of the 1960s it was possible to ``limit'' an atomic conflict (in terms of nuclear yield, area of military operations and targets), many, even right-wing leaders, recognised the grave danger of escalating powerful nuclear weapons to a point at which the conflict would develop into a world-wide nuclear war. That is why, while continuing preparations for thermonuclear war, the MIC concentrated on the strategy of conventional wars and the stockpiling of weapons for them.
The USA put more pressure on its NATO partners, urging them to assume a larger share of responsibility for ensuring the conduct of limited wars. Whereas in the late 1950s, the issue in the USA was that of equipping the West European armies with nuclear weapons, it was now no longer in the US interest to hand over atomic weapons to the Atlantic partners. The West Europeans were being urged to lay greater emphasis on conventional NATCTforces. Simultaneously, the USA expressed readiness to commit to the NATO command five Polaris submarines.
However, this was never done. Instead, in the latter half of the 1960s, the US military put forward a plan for a NATO nuclear force, hoping that some form of Western European involvement in nuclear weapons would tie them still closer to the US policy and reduce the urge in the Western countries to develop co-operation with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. The big US monopolies also expected to boost their profits from multi-billion contracts and to entrench themselves even more vigorously in the West European economy.
Although the MIC leaders yearned to see the launching of^NATO's nuclear fleet, it did not materialise. France took a negative stand, and doubts were expressed by the 154 governments of Canada, Norway and several other West European countries. But the main thing that decided the issue of NATO's nuclear fleet was the Soviet Union's resolute struggle against these dangerous plans, and towards the end of the Johnson Administration the whole idea was shelved.
Having failed with the NATO nuclear fleet plan, the MIC continued to insist on the allies building up their non-atomic weapons stockpiles, claiming that the role of conventional armed forces had increased. In 1968, according to press reports, NATO had under the command of US strategists 76 divisions, over 17,000 tanks, 10,000 combat planes, and thousands of launching pads for various missiles and guns using atomic shells. In 1968, NATO set up its permanent naval force in the Atlantic, consisting of US, British, Canadian, Dutch and Danish warships. A naval command was also instituted with headquarters at Naples to monitor the movement of Soviet ships in the Mediterranean. This ``sword'' of aggression was entirely under Washington's control, which zealously safeguarded its right to take decisions within NATO on the key issues of war and peace without any real consultations with its partners.
In the latter half of the 1960s, the West European countries were obviously ever more inclined to co-- operation on a continental scale instead of military confrontation with the USSR and other socialist countries. Talk of a ``Soviet threat'', which had once enabled Washington to keep its partners in a state of constant tension, was becoming less and less popular. Conversely, awareness of the danger of the US strategy for Europe was being expressed in broad action in the West European countries against the Pentagon's plans.
France's withdrawal from NATO's military organisation had especially serious consequences for US policy in the bloc. By April 1, 1967, US and NATO staffs and troops had been withdrawn from French territory, US depots and other military installations had been closed down. An important link had dropped out of the NATO war machine.
In that period, the US imperialists were becoming increasingly aware that the national liberation movement tended to weaken and steadily erode the pro-Western 155 regimes in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Accordingly, they began to lay emphasis on the counter-insurgency doctrine, the third element of the ``flexible response" strategy.
The MIC responded with much approval to the new strategic plans. The counter-insurgency doctrine was patently colonialist, and was seen by US monopoly capital as a means of putting down the liberation movement in the Third World.
In the USA, preparation for counter-insurgency wars acquired extensive proportions. In an address to the Congress on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy emphasised the urgent need to increase and reorient special forces and units for ``unconventional warfare''. Schools for training ``green berets" were set up in the USA and at its bases abroad, and the first counter-insurgency ``specialists'' were sent to South Vietnam.
On some issues, the USA was forced, without abandoning its attempts to establish its world domination, to adapt itself in some way to the world situation and to use other and less ``pressurised'' instruments, but in suppressing the peoples of Indochina, the leading contingent of the national liberation movement, the main US stake was still on armed force. Under the Kennedy Administration, a decision was taken on the direct involvement of US military personnel in operations in Vietnam, initially in the guise of ``advisers''. Actually, they undertook direct control of military operations by the Saigon puppet army.
On May 11, 1961, according to the secret ``National Security Action Memorandum 52'', President Kennedy approved a programme for ``covert actions'', including the infiltration of agents and subversive groups on the territory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Laos, the establishment of secret bases on the territory, and the intrusion of US aircraft into the DRV's air space.^^1^^
In 1961, General Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Walt Rostow, Deputy Presidential Assistant for National Security, proposed after their special mission to Saigon that the President should send to South _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Pentagon Papers as published by The New York Times, pp. 131--32.
156 Vietnam ``a research and development and military hardware team" to help the Ngo Dinh Diem puppet regime.A cable classified ``Only for the President'', which Taylor sent from the Philippines in early November of the same year, urged the introduction ``without delay" of 8,000 US troops, and admitted that ``the introduction of US forces may increase tensions and risk escalation into a major war in Asia''. But it added, the use of US troops offered more advantages than it created risks and difficulties.^^1^^ President Kennedy had to retreat under the pressure of the military, and towards the end of his Administration there were already 16,000 US officers and men in South Vietnam.
By the mid-1960s, US policy, already oversaturated with aggressiveness and adventurism, reached a limit in Indochina, when an all-out attempt was made to defeat the national liberation movement in this area and to impose the US dictate on the Vietnamese people by force of arms, thereby dealing a heavy blow at the positions of world socialism.
In Indochina, the US military got what they wanted: on August 5, 1964, the US pirates attacked DRV patrol boats and shelled its coastal areas. US aircraft bombed several settlements North of the 17th parallel. That was the start of open US aggression against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. On April 1, 1965, the US leaders decided on the massive use of US troops in South Vietnam, a ``cardinal change of policy" recorded in National Security Action Memorandum 328 of April 6, 1965. The US expeditionary force was at once increased to 44 battalions, with a total numerical strength of nearly 200,000 men. Over the following few years, the Johnson Administration increased the number of US interventionists to half a million. Without good reason, the US people were involved in a sanguinary adventure in far-off Asia.)
In the final period of the Johnson Administration, there were signs of recognition, even while the aggressive and adventurist plans were being carried through, that the aims it had set itself were unattainable, and that the Vietnamese people would not be put down by force of arms. The US ruling class, which had pursued its _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., pp. 147, 148.
157 plunderous schemes for over two decades, was now faced with defeat, and many were reaching the conclusion that thousands more soldiers and more massive air raids could do nothing to change the situation. Accordingly, when General Westmoreland sent a request to the White House in early 1968 for an additional 206,000 military personnel (over and above the 525,000 he had at his disposal), the answer was negative---for the first time.The Joint Chiefs of Staff pleaded not only depletion of US strategic resources but also the prospect of largescale civil disorders in the USA, and insisted that there was need to maintain a large contingent of troops in the country to handle such disorders.
In 1968, the Pentagon generals had no opportunity for making massive use of troops against the US fighters for peace in Vietnam. But they did so later, especially in May 1971, when thousands of soldiers were hurled against the participants of the anti-war movement who thronged the streets of Washington and other American cities.
Despite the reprisals and brutality, more and more US citizens joined in the movement for an end to the Vietnam gamble, up until the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement.
President Johnson was faced with the need to review the Vietnam policy. In March 1968, he announced his intention not to run for President again. He also said the bombings of the DRV were being ended, and that the USA was willing to discuss the Vietnam problem at the negotiation table.
US aggressive policy was a failure despite the barbarous bombings of Vietnam, the 500,000-strong army of interventionists and preparations to use the most devastating weapons. But the militarists refused to reckon^ with reality and insisted that the Johnson Administration should adopt the ``Vietnamisation'' policy. The stubborn resistance by the US military circles to the idea of a political settlement dragged out the agony of US policy in Vietnam for another four years.
In the 1960s, US policy showed the fatal marks left by the aggressive plans of the MIC, which had by then taken shape as an influential force with which the US leaders had necessarily to reckon. The militarists sought to make the Administration's decisions ever more 158 aggressive and attacked even the forced departure from_the `` positions of strength" policy and any forced manoeuvring by the White House, doggedly continuing their drive to escalate the aggression and intensify the preparations for war.
This largely explains the character of the political conceptions, the military-strategic doctrines and the practical acts of the USA under the Democratic Administration. The world had been repeatedly brought to the brink by the stepped-up arms drive, the continued stake on ``strength'' in international affairs, the aggression in Vietnam^ and the intervention in other parts of the world. Despite the declaration about the ``new face of war'', the Democratic Administration displayed no readiness to co-operate with the Soviet Union and other peace-loving states for security or take concrete steps to reduce the danger of a thermonuclear conflict. The MIC is to blame for the failure to use in that period of the opportunities to relax international tensions and arrange relations among all states on the basis of the peaceful coexistence principles.
Another stage in US policy had drawn to a close. The meaning of the results which the USA had achieved by the beginning of the 1970s was recognition of ``the collapse of the messianic conception of the American role in the world".^^1^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Militarism Adapts ItselfThe Republican Administration was installed at a time when a whole era had drawn to a close in world politics, inducing the USA to enter a new phase in world affairs.
Richard M. Nixon said that Kennedy's declaration about the USA's global responsibility and its readiness to ``pay any price ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty" was no loger relevant in the new situation.^^2^^
The chief factor which impelled the US leaders to reappraise the world situation was the steady growth of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of Confidence. Ideas, Power and Violence in America, p. 176.
~^^2^^ The New York Times, January 21, 1972, p. 18.
159 might of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, and the advance of the anti-imperialist national liberation movement. At the start of the 1970s, there was a substantial reduction in the US imperialist capabilities in the sphere of military-political and economic means of fighting the forces of socialism and progress.The USA's position within the capitalist camp had also changed. US leaders themselves analysed the state of world affairs as follows: the era of a bipolar world with the USSR and the USA in confrontation had gone; the world was now pluralist and multipolar, in which other ``power centres" were taking shape alongside the Soviet Union and the United States.
The advance of the ``multipolarity'' idea is in itself recognition of the weakening positions of US imperialism in the present period, for in the capitalist world there are, apart from the USA, two other ``power centres'', namely, the Common Market and Japan, which are divided with the USA by economic contradictions. Their foreign-- policy interests have also been polarised. It turns out that the USA's nuclear missile potential has not been automatically transformed into political influence on the USA's allies. Washington now has need of new more flexible forms for maintaining its leadership in the imperialist camp and using its parners' capabilities and resources in the ongoing acute class struggle in the world arena.
The burden of responsibility for maintaining the kind of world order the US financial and industrial magnates wanted proved to be too heavy for the USA. The tenuous web of ``world commitments'', military alignments, and spheres of influence providing the contours to the `` American Empire" kept breaking at one place after another. The long war in Indochina exposed as totally untenable the US idea of holding frontiers which ran across distant countries and continents. Senator Edward Kennedy said US policy was ``overburdened'' with external commitments, especially on the continent of Europe, and added: ``Western Europe is no longer a weak and threatened area, dependent on American economic aid and military protection, willingly subordinating its policies to ours.'' Accordingly, his recommendation is that the USA should abandon its claims to be the sole arbiter of European affairs. ``The next decade, then, should begin the 160 reduction of American involvement in the military and economic affairs of Europe."^^1^^
Turning to the continent of Asia, Edward Kennedy said: ``What we have built, then, is a massive official American presence in Asia. The most difficult, yet most urgent question for us to determine in the next decade is whether this power is justifiable__If we expect our military presence to insure stability in Asia, we are deluding ourselves...." The Senator did not urge an abandonment of the commitments with respect to Asia, but merely declared: ``I believe, however, that it is distinctly in our interest to substantially reduce our military influence and to redirect our political efforts."^^2^^ In the light of similar judgements, Edward Kennedy also treats the prospects of US policy in Latin America and Africa.
The domestic situation in the USA itself was taking a complicated and critical turn. The efforts to finance the Vietnam war by means of budget deficits generated a tide of inflation and growing prices in the 1960s.
The responsibility for the upheavals at home was being blamed on the Democratic Administrations, which were accused of loud talk and attitudinising, of building up an atmosphere of ``growing confusion'', ``differences and suspicions" in the country. President Nixon declared that in the late 1960s the country had been so torn apart that many were asking themselves j whether America could be governed at all.
The new international situation and the grave internal difficulties faced the US leadership with complicated tasks in formulating a political line for the period ahead. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was an acute discussion of the fundamental changes in US foreign policy and of adapting it to the new conditions, whereas in the 1970s the issue within the ruling class was how to adapt to the new situation in the world. Some US leaders said that while improving the old methods, the policy itself should be corrected and account taken (within the framework of the bourgeoisie's class interests) of the form and content of the realities of the modern world.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Edward M. Kennedy, Decisions for a Decade. Policies and Programs for the 1970s, New York, 1968, pp. 133, 140.
~^^2^^ Ibid., pp. 151--52, 153.
__PRINTERS_P_161_COMMENT__ 11---01462 161Others advised adaptation only in terms of methods and forms, with a quest for subtler and more cunning ways of pursuing the same reactionary domestic policy and the old foreign policy aimed to achieve the expansionist goals of US monopoly capital. The MIC leaders were wholly in favour of the latter approach and sought to add even more dangerous dogmatism and reactionary ideas to its philosophy and practical action.
The Republican Administrations' foreign policy was shaped under the impact of the infighting within the US ruling circles. Its main features were formulated in the so-called Guam Doctrine.^^1^^
The gist of this doctrine was the safeguarding of the US interest at any spot on the globe and its readiness to meet all commitments, which meant that all the basic propositions of the political strategy pursued by earlier US Administrations were to be maintained.
Like ``containment'', ``liberation'' and other postwar US doctrines, the Guam Doctrine expressed the urge of the US ruling circles to continue the policy of safeguarding the world positions of Big Business. It was patently imperialistic and hostile to the vital interests of the peoples of the world, being latent with a readiness for expansionism and meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries. But it also reflected the steady weakening of US imperialism and testified to the collapse of US expansionist plans in the international arena.
The official US strategy was based on the ``realistic deterrent" concept, according to which the Pentagon had no need for anything over and above a ``sufficiency'' of means for nuclear missile war. ``Sufficiency has two meanings. In the military sense, it means enough force to inflict a level of damage on a potential aggressor sufficient to deter him from attacking. In its broader political sense, sufficiency means freedom from being coerced; and it also means numbers, characteristics and deployments of U.S. forces which the Soviet Union cannot reasonably interpret as being intended to threaten a disarming attack."^^2^^ This fairly vague conception, in effect, skirts _-_-_
~^^1^^ U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s. A New Strategy for Peace. A Report to the Congress by Richard Nixon, President of the United States, February 18, 1970, Washington, 1970, pp. 55--56.
~^^2^^ Hearings before the Subcommittee on Arms Control, __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 163. 162 round the limits of ``sufficiency'', and that is exactly what the monopolies and the Pentagon want, for it leaves them a lot of room for building up mass destruction weapons stockpiles.
US acts in the international arena were to be based on the ``partnership'' principle. Instructions coming from the White House emphasised that, in contrast to past periods, the USA now had to deal with stronger allies, who had acquired the capability of resolving local conflicts. That is why the USA, it was said, could achieve success not by interfering in the affairs of others, but by encouraging other countries to make a contribution of their own.
Accordingly, there was a review of the functions of the US general-purpose forces, whose official task now was readiness to wage ``one-and-a-half wars": a ``big war"--- either in Europe or in Asia---and peace-keeping in the event of emergencies in other areas,^^1^^ that is, the exercise of gendarme functions in suppressing the national liberation movements.
Substantial reorganisations were carried out in the troops set up in the preceding period for counter-- insurgency wars or special operations. The ``green berets" had not lived up to the hopes pinned on them as a basic means in the fight against the liberation movement in the Third World countries. The counter-insurgency theory had been a total fiasco in Vietnam, where the US special troops could do nothing to right the sad state of affairs. In 1972, their numbers were reduced to 6,000, their task being still to mount acts of sabotage, terrorism, intelligence and subversive activity with the use of the latest technical gadgets. But they now acquired a new function, that of training saboteurs for the armies of the USA's partners.
The US military circles hoped to compensate some of the adjustments in their strategic doctrine bearing on the methods of conducting non-nuclear wars by more vigorous _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 162. International Law and Organization of the Committee on Foreign Relations. United States Senate, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session on Arms Control Implications of Current U.S. Defense Budget, June 16, 17 and July 13, and 14, 1971, Washington, 1971, pp. 18--19.
~^^1^^ U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s ... p. 19.
__PRINTERS_P_162_COMMENT__ 11* 163 use of the conventional armed forces of their allies and, most importantly, by improving their nuclear missile weapons, constituting the hasis of the ``realistic deterrence" strategy. The MIC launched extensive measures to build up the strategic forces, which were to be sufficiently numerous and have the necessary characteristics to guarantee the enemy's ``annihilation''. The most aggressive section of the US military insisted that the ``realistic deterrence" plans should be made patently aggressive. They claimed that it was not enough to have a ``second strike" capability; there was need to move on to a ``first strike" capability conception. This meant a build-up of missile forces required to annihilate the enemy's entire potential and not just to destroy his cities and industrial centres.At the time, this was a source of serious concern among US political and public circles, because they could give another turn to the missile spiral.
In the recent period, the Navy and its allied shipbuilding corporations have been doing most of the pushing within the MIC and attaching a heightened importance to the US ocean strategy, suggesting that US foreignpolicy activity was bound increasingly to depend on the ``reliability'' of the strategic forces deployed on the World Ocean.
The other services also seek to play the leading role in the US strategy of ``realistic deterrence''. Air Force and Army generals and the respective corporations insist'on developing their own weapons systems in a sharp fight within the MIC. The dispute reached Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird in the form of a strongly worded classified memorandum from Air Force Secretary Robert C. Seamans, sharply criticising the Navy's claim to an ever greater share of the military appropriations and rejecting the Navy's analysis of the strategic situation.^^1^^
The counterattack against the Navy was joined by leaders of the Army and the associated industrial corporations. One article said that the Navy was misleading the US leadership concerning the role of aircraft carriers, which were useful in time of crisis and as a show of force, but this required no more than nine or, at most, twelve _-_-_
~^^1^^ The Washington Post, March 18, 1972, p. Al.
164 carriers, whereas the Navy now had sixteen. The conclusion was that the Navy's aircraft-carrier programme should be cut, and the funds so released allocated to the other services.^^1^^Despite the bickering, the Army and the Air Force were naturally receiving billions in appropriations, which were funnelled into the coffers of the arms manufacturers. The MIC sought to divert the attention of the US public from the arms race by claiming that stability in the world was being maintained by means of force, and that a build-up of the US military potential was virtually the basic condition for any subsequent settlement of international issues by political means.
The MIC has also tried to adapt the Republican Administration's ``partnership idea" to its plans for reviving the ``positions of strength" doctrine.
In the early 1970s, US leaders were becoming increasingly aware that the old methods would not help them to maintain their spheres of influence in many parts of the world or to meet their commitments in promoting the interests of US monopoly capital. For all its riches, the USA could not afford to keep millions of soldiers and thousands of bases abroad in an acute monetary and economic crisis and mounting class contradictions in the country.
However great the prestige of the capitalist world's mightiest power, the USA could not continue to ignore the interests of other states.
That being so, the US leaders had to think about cutting the military, political and economic costs of their acts in the international arena, and that was the purpose of their declarations drawn up in accordance with the Guam Doctrine, which now spoke only of the USA's participation in the defence'and development of its allies.
The MIC sought to turn the ``partnership'' idea into intensified military preparations and resistance to the positive processes in international affairs. Primary attention was now devoted to the West European area and the USA's NATO partners.
In their practical action, the US leaders had to reckon with a largely new situation that was taking shape in _-_-_
~^^1^^ Military Review, February 1972, pp. 35--51.
165 Europe in the recent period. As a result of the initiatives of the USSR and the fraternal socialist countries, the principles of peaceful coexistence and all-round cooperation were being increasingly established in relations among states on the continent, and substantial changes were also taking place in the attitude of the West European countries. Many of the USA's partners in Western Europe had issued an unequivocal challenge to the US claims to leadership in various spheres of politics, economics and strategy. That is why the USA was forced to take various steps to meet the inclination to develop goodneighbour and mutually beneficial ties between the West European countries and the USSR and other socialist countries.The mutual understanding at the Soviet-American summit in June 1973 during the discussion of European security problems, notably their mutual desire to hold a European Conference as soon as possible, was of great importance in ensuring stable peace on the continent.
However, the USA's militaristic forces refused to reckon with the positive changes on the continent of Europe and have insisted on more extensive military preparations within the NATO framework, putting pressure on other NATO members and demanding that they increase their share of spending on armaments. In NATO's two decades, its members spent on armaments the fabulous sum of nearly $1,500,000 million. Pentagon generals have tried to involve the West European partners in a fresh round of military spending. According to a longterm study, Allied Defense for the 'Seventies (AD 70), adopted by the NATO Council in Brussels in December 1970, 10 European countries (this ``Eurogroup'' does not include France, Portugal and Iceland) promised to contribute an additional $1,000 million to ``NATO defense" within the next five years. This makes the ``partnership'' ever more costly for the West European states.
In order to make the militaristic substance of the MIC's European plans less provocative in the atmosphere of detente, a ``dual strategy" doctrine, linking up the strategy of defence and the strategy of detente, was circulated for propaganda purposes. The idea is that NATO should be built up in every possible way for negotiating 166 with the East from a ``positions of strength" as allegedly tho only condition for any detente on the continent.
Following the re-establishment of pence in Indochina, the MIC intensified its demands for switching the centre of gravity of major US interests abroad to Western Europe. This was advocated, among others, by Senator Tower, a well-known champion of the MIC's interests on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In the spring of 1973, he undertook a special tour of Western Europe to find ways of maintaining strong military positions for the USA in the area. He said that it was necessary to go on building up US military strength in Europe in qualitative terms, making use of the resources released with the end of the Vietnam war. But Tower and others like him believed that it was not the USA itself but the West European members of NATO that should provide most of the effort, money and manpower.
The ``partnership'' doctrine is even more militaristic with respect to the countries of Asia, where the political co-operation aspect has been whittled down to a minimum: the Asian partners are assigned the role of suppliers of cannon fodder and a bridgehead for US aggressive operations.
Nor is Japan any exception in this respect, for it is regarded by the USA as a military-strategic base in the Far East area, where it has 48 major military installations, 30 of these belonging to the Army, 11 to the Navy and 7 to the Air Force. Although in 1972, the USA transferred to the Japanese control of Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, which had been under virtual US occupation since the'Second World War, military experts believe that this wilTnot have any ``negative consequences" for the US ``security interest" in the Far East, because the main base for US troops in the area remains under the Pentagon's control.
Defense Department spokesmen have kept saying that the USA intends to insist that Japan should do more to maintain the US nuclear shield and increase other military outlays under the bilateral Security Treaty. There is also another aspect to the US intention to involve Japan in its military plans: as its military budget grows, it should increase its military purchases in the USA. The US press regards these claims as a kind of `` 167 compensation" for the millions of dollars spent annually by the USA on the maintenance of US bases and troops in Japan, which now buys US arms worth $200 million a year, and the USA would like to see the figure go up.
The USA has treated its other Asian partners in a much more cavalier way, requiring them to supply only contingents of troops, which the Pentagon has used in its military gambles. In 1973, nearly 600,000 US officers and men were stationed at the numerous military bases in South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines and Thailand, and also on board ships of the US Seventh Fleet. Five US military bases are sited in the Philippines, where 15,000 US soldiers are stationed. The Pentagon has seven military bases in Thailand, and more in Turkey and Taiwan. Twenty-five thousand US military personnel are stationed in Latin America.
Altogether, the Pentagon has nearly 2,000 bases on foreign territory, maintaining these at a cost of $25-- 30,000 million a year. The Pentagon has worked hard to fortify its foreign bases, to saturate them with modern weapons, and to use them as bridgeheads for aggression and provocation against nations taking the path of independent development. It wants more bases abroad, above all in areas of mounting struggle against the forces of imperialism by the national liberation movement.
The MIC regards Israel as one of its most important ``partners'', for its leaders have been pursuing a stubborn course of aggression against the Arab peoples in the Middle East. Israel has been assigned the role of a key bridgehead in the fight against the national liberation movement and a forward-line post in protecting US political, economic and strategic positions in the Middle East. Tel Aviv's US patrons have generously supplied it with large consignments of weapons, including modern aircraft, missiles and tanks, and have provided millions of dollars to pay for these. The MIC has supported the Israeli leaders' sabotage of any political settlement in the Middle East and an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict through a pull-out of the aggressor's troops from the occupied territories and the establishment of peace, and has sought to hamper the Arab countries' advance along the path of progress, and to break the Arab peoples' will for freedom and independence.
168The Pentagon's policy of Vietnamisation, which it pursued in Indochina, was just another version of the ``partnership'' conception, as applied to Southeast Asia.
The US imperialists hoped that the Vietnamisation policy would help to substitute puppet troops for US troops in bearing the brunt of the fighting on the battlefields. The idea was to get Asians to fight Asians. In the final stages of the war in Vietnam, the Pentagon did manage to knock together a fairly numerous Saigon Army, but the Vietnamisation idea still failed: the puppet troops were unable to stand up to the patriotic forces' movement.
The Saigon troops, under direct US control, did most of the fighting against the patriotic forces in South Vietnam. In April 1970, a US-Saigon armed intervention was mounted in Cambodia. A Soviet Government statement issued in this connection stressed that ``to the grave responsibility which the USA bears for the war against the Vietnamese people has been added the responsibility for the aggression committed against the people of Cambodia".^^1^^ In January 1971, US-supported Saigon troops invaded Laos, a move which the Pentagon designed to demonstrate the ``effectiveness'' of the Vietnamisation policy. But the very opposite result was achieved.
The so-called Vietnamisation of the war in Vietnam and the extension of the aggression to Cambodia and Laos did not help the USA to extricate itself from the dirty war in Indochina or save the ideologists of aggression from a fiasco. Still the stake on the Saigon troops equipped with US weapons and controlled by the Pentagon did help the USA to reduce its direct involvement in the fighting on the ground and to reduce the loss of American lives. This gave the aggressive and reactionary circles of the US bourgeoisie the pretext to intensify their pressure on the US government ``not to hurry" with a peace settlement and to make another attempt to secure a military victory in Indochina through the massive use of US military hardware.
Accordingly, the emphasis in the US involvement in the war was switched to an intensification of the air war. On November 21, 1970, the Pentagon began its barbarous _-_-_
~^^1^^ Pravda, May 5, 1970.
169 bombings of Hanoi, the capital of the DRV, the major port of Haiphong and other cities in the Republic. The territorial waters of the DRV were mined. The Pentagon had elaborate plans for invading the territory of the DRV, first it was planned to use the US troops, but since 1969---the South Vietnamese.The war in Indochina showed the imperialist policy of aggression and oppression of nations to be untenable. The steadfastness and courage displayed by the freedomloving peoples of Indochina, multiplied by constant support from the Soviet and other peoples of the socialist countries, the international communist movement and all the progressive forces could not be broken by the aggressors either by means of direct military intervention, by torpedoing the talks, or using mercenaries from countries in ``partnership'' with the USA, but actually dependent on US imperialism.
The imperialist aggression inflicted countless calamities on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. According to official Pentagon data, from 1966 on the US Air Force dropped on the countries of Indochina over 7 million tons of bombs, or 3.5 times more than the figure for all the fronts of the Second World War. But the aggressors did not go scot free either. The US losses, according to Pentagon data, came to 45,940 men killed and over 300,000 wounded, and were almost equal to (and in the number of wounded were 50 per cent higher than) the US losses in the First World War. US military spending only in the decade from fiscal 1963 to 1972 came to the astronomical figure of $680,000 million. For the whole period of the war in Vietnam, direct US military outlays on the Vietnam gamble came to $140,000 million.^^1^^ The war aggravated to an extreme many domestic US problems, while the USA's foreign-policy prestige fell to an all-time low. The USA had had to pay a stiff price for its involvement in the long gamble into which it had been drawn by monopoly capital, the reactionary politicians and the aggressive militarists of the Pentagon.
J. William Fulbright, a consistent opponent of the
US intervention in Indochina, said in a book, The Crippled
_-_-_
^^1^^ See USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, No. 3, 1973, p. 3
(in Russian),
An equally important element of the new US policy, according to the Republican Administration leaders, was their readiness to negotiate. This component of the foreign-policy doctrine was addressed to the sphere of relations with the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. The MIC circles gave a guarded reception to the announcement of the government's readiness to negotiate, and continued their attempts to intimidate US public opinion with inventions about the `` aggressiveness of communism'', and statements against any extension of contacts to the Soviet Union.
During the lengthy period of the ``positions of strength" policy, ``negotiation'' was virtually taboo in the diplomatic vocabulary of US military leaders. Under the Republican Administrations of Eisenhower and Dulles, the very idea of peaceful coexistence or any agreements with the Soviet Union was flatly denied. In order to prevent the establishment of broad contacts between the USA and the Soviet Union, the Pentagon leaders mounted all manner of provocations, like the overflight of the U-2 spy plane and the ``Caribbean crisis''. The opportunities for a reasonable Soviet-US dialogue were nullified by the USA's policy of interfering in the affairs of other nations, encroaching on their legitimate rights and sovereignty, and seeking to impose its will on other nations and whole areas of the world.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, despite the resistance of the military and reactionaries, the US leaders were forced to draw practical conclusions from the incontrovertible fact that force had proved unavailable in their efforts to secure superiority over the USSR, weaken the positions of the Soviet Union and its allies, and undermine the national liberation movement. Alongside the old hostile tendency, there was evidence of a desire in the approach to relations with the USSR to prevent the existing contradictions from growing into direct armed conflict, and to keep open the opportunities for contacts and negotiations and for some agreements on a mutually acceptable basis.
171US official circles had to reckon with the changes in the mood of the US people. In earlier electoral campaigns it had been easier to win votes by striking up ``strength'' attitudes, issuing statements about^the need to crush communism, and conducting a ``tough line" with respect to the Soviet Union, and with similar cold war cliches but in the 1972 Presidential campaign it was obvious that the average American wanted a relaxation of tensions, a reduction and termination of the arms race and improvement of relations with the USSR.
The steps taken by the Soviet side to normalise relations with the USA were fully in line with the CPSU's foreign policy. Firm rebuffs to the aggressive moves of imperialism were invariably combined with a constructive Soviet policy aimed to settle outstanding problems and arranging and maintaining normal relations with states belonging to different social systems. The CPSU Central Committee Report to the 24th Congress said: ``Our principled line with respect to the capitalist countries, including the USA, is consistently and fully to practise the principles of peaceful coexistence, to develop mutually advantageous ties, and to co-operate, with states prepared to do so, in strengthening peace, making our relations with them as stable as possible. But we have to consider whether we are dealing with a real desire to settle outstanding issues at the negotiation table or attempts to conduct a ``positions = __NOTE__ This double quote should be single in original. of strength" policy."^^1^^
Those were the premises for the Soviet-US summit meeting in May 1972. The talks in Moscow and the documents adopted as a result of the meeting, it was emphasised in a statement issued by the CPSU Central Committee, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet and the USSR Council of Ministers, ``are of high international importance and constitute a substantial step in the development of Soviet-American relations, promoting the consolidation of the principle of peaceful coexistence among states with different social systems, the cause of peace and the security of nations."^^2^^
There is hardly another set of talks in world political _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of tht, CPSU, pp. 35--36.
~^^2^^ Pravda, June 2, 1972.
172 history to match those of the Soviet-American Summit meeting considering, on the one hand, the radical socioeconomic distinctions and the antithetical stand taken by the USSR and the USA on a number of important international problems, and on the other, the results and fruitfulness of the dialogue between the leaders of the two countries. In the seven days of the official meetings and conversations in Moscow, a broad range of questions in bilateral relations and the overall world situation was frankly and circumstantially discussed, the spheres of promising co-operation outlined, and the areas of diverging standpoints on a number of problems brought out. Ten important joint documents were adopted at once.The Basic Principles of Mutual Relations Between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America contained the gist of all that was important and positive in Soviet-American relations. The purpose was to strengthen the peaceful relations between the two countries and to underpin them with the soundest possible basis, making every effort to avert the threat of war, to promote detente and consolidate international security andj co-operation. It said that in the nuclear [age there was no alternative to peaceful coexistence in the maintenance of relations between the USSR and the USA.
The commitments written into the document are of profound significance, for they were made by the two most powerful nations in the world with the largest nuclear missile potentials, on the nature of whose relations essentially depends the overall situation on the globe. With the signing of this document in Moscow, relations between the USSR and the USA were first placed within a definite international-law framework which completely accords with the idea of peaceful coexistence. Indeed, the document is similar to a treaty between the two states, recording the principles and prospects for the development of their relations with each other.
Two other documents adopted at the Moscow meeting--- the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, and the Interim Agreement Between the United States of America and the 173 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms---may, with good reason, have a place apart among the key developments of our day. The two parties succeeded in reaching an understanding on a problem which bears on the very substance of the military might of the two powers.
Under the Treaty, the USSR and the USA undertake sharply to limit the possibility of deploying ABM systems and are allowed to site no more than two ABM systems: one each round Moscow and Washington, and one each for the defence of an area of ICBM launching silos. Each of these systems should consist of no more than 100 antiballistic missiles and an equal number of launching pads, and also of a corresponding number of radar stations. Under the Interim Agreement, the USSR and the USA have undertaken not to start from July 1, 1972, the construction of any ICBM ground based stationary launching pads. The Interim Agreement limits the number of modern submarines and ballistic missile launchers on them.
The limitation of the ABM systems makes it possible to slow down the race, which was about to speed up between defensive and offensive weapons, a contest between the ``shield and the sword" that would have led mankind up another twist of the arms spiral requiring more and more billions of outlays. The freezing of the offensive strategic systems of the USSR and the USA at the present level means that the nuclear missile burden of the globe will not, at any rate, grow heavier. The Treaty and the Interim Agreement have, for that reason, been welcomed as an important ineasure helping to reduce the threat of nuclear war, to restrain the arms race and open up prospects for advance towards general disarmament.
The Soviet-American summit meeting also yielded other favourable results, including a number of agreements on co-operation in the sphere of science, technology and trade. As a result of the October 1972 meeting in Moscow, a set of treaties for developing Soviet-American trade was concluded. All these agreements meet the state interests both of the USSR and the USA, and the most immediate vital requirements of all men, and fully serve the cause of peace.
174The Soviet-American summit talks in June 1973 were a fresh and important contribution to strengthening the detente and consolidating world peace and the security of nations. The nine bilateral agreements concluded during L. I. Brezhnev's visit to the USA, range over a broad spectrum of problems. Fundamental importance attaches to the Agreement on Prevention of Nuclear War, an important step in reducing and ultimately eliminating the threat of nuclear war and establishing a system of real guarantees for international security. Practical implementation of these agreements and the swing away from atomic confrontation between the USA and the USSR to a line aimed to prevent nuclear war and the settlement of outstanding issues by negotiation will be of truly historic importance for humanity as a whole.
The Basic Principles of Negotiations on the Further Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, signed in Washington in June 1973, have had a big part to play. The Political Bureau of the CPSU Central Committee, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, and the USSR Council of Ministers said in a Resolution adopted on the results of the visit to the USA by the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L. I. Brezhnev: ``Continuing the line of the Soviet-American agreements concluded in Moscow in May 1972, this document provides for active continuation of efforts aimed not only to limit strategic offensive armaments both in terms of quantity and in terms of their qualitative improvement, but also orients upon the adoption of measures for their subsequent reduction."^^1^^
During the Vladivostok meeting between L. I. Brezhnev and Gerald Ford in 1974, an understanding was reached on a new long-term agreement on the limitation of strategic offensive weapons.
The normalisation of Soviet-American relations generated by all these meetings has had a beneficial effect on the international situation as a whole on a number of key foreign-policy problems, including European security, reduction of armed forces and armaments in Europe, questions of disarmament, prohibition of nuclear war, and so on; and made it possible to start negotiations _-_-_
~^^1^^ Pravda, June 30, 1973.
175 with the participation of various states. This gave the USA an opportunity to demonstrate in deed how serious and business-like their readiness to negotiate, as proclaimed within the framework of the Guam Doctrine, will be.However, the MIC and America's reactionary forces have tried hard to keep the USA's adaptation to the new conditions within the line of building up superior strength. That is also their approach to the ``partnership'' idea, which they have used to deeper enmesh the USA's partners in the Pentagon's aggressive preparations. The militaristic forces do not want any improvement in Soviet-American relations and seek to return them to the worst period of the cold war. They have resisted the arrangement of any constructive ties between the USA and the socialist countries and exerted a drag on international detente. Their calculations and interests largely dictate the limits for official US policy on a number of important international problems, which is why it has been impossible to achieve any positive advances on a Middle East settlement and the solution of other urgent foreign-policy issues.
Assessing the prospects for the further development of relations between the USSR and the USA, one should bear in mind that the USA is an imperialist state with all the aspirations and policies that are antithetical in class terms to those of the socialist states.
Referring to the further development of relations between the USSR and the USA, L. I. Brezhnev said at the 25th Congress of the CPSU: ``There are good prospects for our relations with the United States in future as well---to the extent to which they will continue to develop on this jointly created realistic basis when, given the obvious difference between the class nature of the two states and between their ideologies, there is a firm intention to settle differences and disputes not by force, not by threats or sabre rattling, but by peaceful political means."^^1^^
However, influential forces in the USA seek to frustrate the development of Soviet-American relations as a whole because they have no interest either in improving _-_-_
~^^1^^ 25th Congress of the CPSU. Documents and Resolutions. Moscow, 1976, p. 25.
176 relations with the USSR or in the international detente. They seek to throw a distorted light on the Soviet Union's policy and, using the bogey of a Soviet threat, call for a fresh twist in the spiral of the US and NATO arms drive.Some difficulties also arise from the aspects of the US policy which pose a threat to the peoples' freedom and independence, being gross interference in their domestic affairs on the side of the forces of oppression and reaction. The Soviet Union has always opposed and will continue to oppose such acts. The CPSU Central Committee's Report to the 25th Congress stresses: ``The Soviet Union is firmly determined to follow the line of further improving Soviet-US relations in strict accordance with the letter and spirit of the agreements reached and commitments taken, in the interests of both peoples and peace on earth."^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 26.
__PRINTERS_P_178_COMMENT__ 12---01462 [177] __ALPHA_LVL1__ CONCLUSIONThe MIC seeks to secure control of many sectors of US life: the state machinery, the economy, ideology and politics. ``The growing power of the military-industrial complex extends to many spheres of American society. It commands the economic life of whole cities and regions. Key branches of industry are now dependent on military procurement. In these the military-industrial complex has a decisive voice in collective bargaining and the freedom of workers to strike. It intervenes in intellectual and academic life through research grants, 'think tank' projects and selective subsidies to universities. Propaganda detachments of the Pentagon and public relations departments of armaments industries employ innumerable devices, from planted comic strips to supposedly scholarly works, to shape public opinion."^^1^^
The MIC leaders' actions and intentions are fraught with grave danger for other nations and for world peace. Their past deeds have repeatedly brought humanity to the brink of thermonuclear conflict. In the interests of the bellicose section of US monopoly capital, do/ens of aggressive acts, plots, armed interventions in the affairs of other nations taking the path of free and independent development have been provoked and mounted. The long and sanguinary gamble of the US militarists in Indochina poisoned the whole of the international atmosphere for a long period. Having set themselves the illusory goal of establishing a ``Pax Americana"on the globe, securing world domination and subordinating other states to the will of US monopoly capital, the US militarists _-_-_
~^^1^^ Mew Program of the Communist Party U.S.A., New York, 1970, pp. 19--20.
178 inflicted on the peoples of the world countless calamities and sufferings, material expenditures and spiritual upheavals in the first quarter-century after the war.Meanwhile, there was a sharp change in the balance of forces in the world arena. The USA's temporary superiority in atomic weapons was rapidly nullified, as the great vital forces of socialism, the CPSU's sage leadership, and the Soviet people's dedicated labour transformed the USSR into an invincible power, which was much stronger than in the 1940s. Shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet Union stood the young socialist states within a fraternal community.
With the growing might of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries and the advance of the national liberation movement, US imperialism now had to concern itself with how to maintain the political, strategic and economic positions it had acquired. Here the US leaders, the MIC circles in the first place, pinned their hopes above all on the threat or use of force. They responded to the emergence of new death-dealing weapons by seeking to modernise their strategic theories and conceptions so as to reduce the risk of thermonuclear operations for themselves.
In the 1970s, US imperialism was forced to adjust itself to even more unfavourable international conditions and to modify its policies. The US government's consent to a political settlement of the Indochina crisis and the signing of the Agreement ending the war in Vietnam on January 27, 1973, was direct evidence that the US ruling circles were no longer capable in the prevailing conditions of pursuing their line of armed intervention in the affairs of the peoples of Indochina. The Guam Doctrine expressed the invariably aggressive substance of imperialism but was also an objective reflection of the reduced US capabilities in the international arena.
The failure of the US monopolies' plans to establish world domination resulted from the sustained struggle between the forces of imperialism, reaction and aggression, on the one hand, and the forces of social progress, liberation and peace, on the other, a contest in the centre of which stand the USA, the leading imperialist power, and the Soviet Union, which is in the van of the progressive forces of our day.
__PRINTERS_P_178_COMMENT__ 12* 179The Soviet Union has countered the imperialist policy of violence and aggrandisement with its Leninist foreign policy aimed further to consolidate the positions, unity and might of the world socialist system, and the cohesion of the international communist and working-class movement and of all the revolutionary, progressive forces of our day. The 25th Congress of the CPSU denned the main tasks of the foreign-policy activity of the CPSU and the Soviet state and put forward a vigorous programme of struggle for peace and international co-- operation, and set out fundamental propositions on the basic aspects of economic policy. The Soviet people's steadily rising material and cultural standards and the powerful economic, scientific and technical potential help further to consolidate the Soviet Union's international positions and the defence capability of the whole socialist community, creating real potentialities for frustrating the aggressive plans of imperialism.
A key line in Soviet foreign policy is the struggle to do away with the hotbeds of war and to beat back imperialist encroachments on the freedom and independence of nations. The Soviet Union has shown that it is true to its internationalist duty by making the most substantial contribution to the victory scored by the heroic people of Vietnam, and the patriots of Laos and Cambodia against US imperialist aggression. The USSR has supported the Arab countries' just struggle against Israel's aggression, and the just cause of other nations standing up for their independence and freedom.
The Soviet Union and the fraternal socialist countries have resolutely rebuffed the moves by the forces of imperialist reaction and aggression, pursuing a line of peaceful coexistence among states with different social systems. The Soviet Union's idea of strengthening peace, security and co-operation in Europe and Asia has met with international recognition and support. In developing friendly and mutually advantageous relations with neighbouring countries and states on all continents, the Soviet Union is guided by the interests of peace and cooperation.
The Leninist foreign-policy line pursued by the CPSU Central Committee has met with the Soviet people's complete understanding and unanimous approval. The 180 fraternal socialist countries, the Communist Parties of the world and broad circles of democratic opinion have welcomed and supported the international activity of the CPSU and the Soviet Government, regarding the Soviet people as a reliable friend and ally in the fight against imperialism and colonialism, against militarism, for peace and friendship among nations, for freedom and national independence, for democracy and socialism. The Soviet Union has no territorial claims on any country whatsoever, has threatened no one and has no intention of attacking anyone.
A quarter-century of the ``positions of strength" policy, the spread of militarism, and the MIC's large-scale machinations have left their mark on the United States itself. US policy has had its foundations markedly eroded, while the country has been plunged into an acute political, economic and spiritual crisis. The aggressive line of US monopoly capital, which calls for endless inputs into the arms race, has disembodied the US ``new frontiers" and the ``great society" projects. US militarism evidently consumes the wealth created by the people's labour, preventing its use for the benefit of men. For the same reason, no headway was made in the Republican Administration's loudly advertised programme for socioeconomic reforms in the USA.
The world's richest capitalist country is in the grip of insoluble problems caused by the funnelling of vast resources for the MIC's needs.
This fact has been established beyond any doubt: it is impossible to waste billions of dollars on the arms race and burn material resources in the flames of military gambles for the illusory ``world leadership" of the US monopolies, and also expect to solve the looming domestic problems. The US example has justified what V. I. Lenin said in this context: ``There are different limits for different countries, but for all of them there is a limit beyond which it is impossible to continue to wage war for the sake of the interests of the capitalists."^^1^^ The USA has already reached the limit, and public awareness of this fact helps to invigorate the resistance to the MIC.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, ``Achievements and Difficulties'', Vol. 29, p. 64.
181For the first time in US history, there is a growing opposition to the MIC's activity, which has plunged the country into a grave crisis. The discontent which is expressed in various forms and for various reasons tends to merge in an anti-militarist movement involving various sections of society.
Success in the action against militarism depends on vigorous participation by US labour. Despite the pressure from the monopolies and the treacherous stand of the labour elite, the US working people's movement against the sway of the MIC has been growing. As the world positions of US capital are weakened and the cost of maintaining its ``empire'' and foreign bases increased, the monopolies have less room for economic manoeuvring at home, for issuing handouts to the labour aristocracy and bribing a part of the workers in order to divert the working class from anti-war action.
Anti-MIC groupings have also been establishing positions in influential spheres of the US ruling class. Many have come to realise that for the first time the US economy can no longer execute a sharp leap forward in the strategic and conventional arms race, without negative consequences for US living standards and for the multiplicity of vital economic and social problems at home. Over the past few years, there has been growing awareness among the US ruling bourgeoisie of the truth that bellicose anti-communism and military gambles tend to undermine the US positions in the competition with other capitalist countries, spreading monetary and financial upheavals in the USA and eroding the basis of its economic and political influence in the world.
There is growing opposition in US political spheres to the MIC's policy. One of the first to raise his voice in protest against the growing influence of the military was J. K. Galbraith, the well-known political and public figure, who is sure that ``a drastic change is occurring in public attitudes toward the military and its industrial allies."^^1^^
There is a growing body of evidence to prove this. One of the most eloquent has come from the publication of the 47 volumes of the supersecret documents of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Harpers Magazine, June 1969, p. 32.
182 Pentagon's Vietnam report. All of this shows that there are highly influential circles in the USA who have issued a challenge to the government's aggressive policy.The publication of the Pentagon Papers and the subsequent polemics testify to a fierce struggle within the US ruling circles, and to a split and crisis within the country's top political circles.
Influential political representatives of US business not connected with the making of weapons have joined with the opposition in the Establishment. Their discontent with the state of affairs in US political life is enhanced by their disagreement with the MIC demands for stepping up the arms race.
The criticism of the MIC could hardly have assumed such proportions but for the acute struggle within Big Business itself. The arms monopolies do not in any sense mako up the whole of the ruling class. But in their efforts to impose their own line, they have come into direct confrontation with many other influential groupings of US monopoly capital. Thus, of the 500 leading US corporations far from all are directly connected with arms production. Because of the acute competition from the giant corporations of California or Texas, many others have been deprived of profitable government orders. Hence the political turns, which are hard to explain at first glance: the criticism coming from some influential Wall Street companies of measures benefitting the MIC, the financing of political campaigns of the opposition and condemnation of the runaway arms drive.
Nearly 2,500 businessmen, bankers and directors of insurance companies, for instance, set up a movement called Businessmen For Peace in Vietnam, whose purpose was to speed up the end of the war and reduce military credits. This was not done for ideological reasons but in order to safeguard the interests of the civilian sectors of Big Business. Such differences do not in themselves open up any potentialities for a successful search for progressive solutions in the fight against the threat of war and militarism, because that can be done only by the people's struggle. But the strife within the monopoly camp can, in some cases, make anti-militarist action broader and more vigorous.
183Opposition to the MIC and its dangerous demands has; also been growing on Capitol Hill. In the recent period, members of the Congress, senators in particular, have not automatically rubberstamped all the requests of the military, and have taken a more critical view of the Pentagon's demands.
In the ``golden age" of the MIC, approval of military credits was a mere formality. The first signal of alarm for the MIC was sounded in 1968, when the Senate first took three days of lively debate to approve appropriations for arms deliveries. In the following fiscal year, both Houses took four months to work out the basis for an agreement on a programme for $20,700 million worth of new weapons. The amount requested by the Pentagon was somewhat reduced. In December 1969, the overall military budget left the Congress nearly $5,000 million shorter. Nothing similar had happened since the war in Korea.
Acute contradictions between the Congress and the Republican Administration were most pronounced in 1970 during the Senate discussion of appropriations for the Safeguard ABM System. Approval of appropriations for the programme by a small majority reflected the important changes in the Senate's stand on MIC requests.
At the end of 1971, a majority in the Senate came out against a foreign aid bill, which was defeated by an odd coalition of Senate ``doves'' and ``hawks''. Together with active critics of adventurism in US foreign policysenators Fulbright, Mansfield, Symington, Church and others---the programme was opposed by advocates of the ``US Big Stick" in international affairs, among them senators Goldwater, Eastland and Dole.
The defeat of the foreign aid bill in the Senate reflected the dissatisfaction among influential US circles not only with the methods but also with the substance of some of the aspects of US foreign policy, which are clearly at variance with the realities of our day.
Massive anti-war demonstrations by young people, thousands of burned call-up papers, combat medals hurled to the ground near the White House by young soldiers sent by the Pentagon to fight in Indochina, these and many other examples testify to the growing resolution of more and more Americans to prevent the USA from becoming a ``garrison state".
184There is a growing demand among broad circles of political leaders, businessmen and young people for a more realistic approach to world developments, a repudiation of the reliance on strength, and a growing urge for detente and a settlement of issues by peaceful means.
The summit talks between the USSR and the USA in May 1972 and the fruitful visit by the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L. I. Brezhnev to the USA in June 1973 marked a decisive turning point not only in the development of relations between the two countries but in the international situation as a whole.
The advance of states along the way of detente is the objective reality of our nuclear age, and this is the basis of Soviet foreign policy, which has consistently urged the adoption of the principles of peaceful coexistence in international affairs. Most ruling circles in the West now have to reckon with this reality.
But it should be borne in mind that influential reactionary circles who hate detente are still active in the USA and allied countries. They have been moving against the tide with visions of a return to the cold war period. This means that ahead lies more stubborn struggle to consolidate the triumph of realism in international affairs which the peace forces have secured in their active campaign over the decades for a restructuring of the relations between the USSR and the USA on the basis of the peaceful coexistence principles.
For the time being, not many factors in US society tend substantially to restrain and limit the MIC, which has been consuming billions upon billions of dollars and the energies and capabilities of US science to the detriment of the American people's vital interests, and the interests of peace and universal well-being.
The MIC's impact on US domestic and foreign policy has not declined, and its leaders continue to plug the global line in foreign policy, producing new doctrines and conceptions which should help to contain any nuclearmissile conflict within a framework offering security for the USA, and still seek to use war as an instrument of policy for the US ruling class, which wants tofrecarve history by force of arms.
``^
The schemes of the aggressive forces and extremist groupings in the USA can create considerable difficulties 185 in the way of the detente and the budding normalisation of Soviet-American relations.
In his speech at the World Congress of Peace Forces in Moscow in October 1973, L. I. Brezhnev said:
``It should be clearly seen that the threat to peace is posed by quite concrete social groups, organisations and individuals. Thus, even on the testimony of the top-ranking leaders in the major Western countries, the sinister alliance of the professional militarists and the monopolies making fortunes out of weapons of war, usually known as the military-industrial complex, has become something of a 'state within the state' in these countries and has acquired self-sufficient power. Militarism cripples not only the society that has produced it. The exhaust gas emitted by the war-preparation machine poisons the political atmosphere of the world with fumes of hatred, fear and violence. To justify its existence, myths are created about a 'Soviet menace' and the need to defend the so-called Western democracies. But the militarist robot fosters as its cherished progeny the most reactionary, tyrannical and fascist regimes, and devours the democratic freedoms."^^1^^
Aggressive groupings in the USA tried to use the October 1973 events in the Middle East to inflate the war hysteria and the Pentagon budget, and also to extend more military aid to the Israeli extremists. On a broader plane, these circles hoped to undermine the improvement of the international situation, and above all the development of Soviet-American relations. Their main idea was that the Middle East events had shown that the detente was shaky and harmful.
But the conclusions that can be drawn from these and other similar events are quite different from those of the MIC. The joint initiative of the USSR and the USA to overcome the Middle East crisis and arrange the Geneva Peace Conference on the Middle East have shown the benefits for world peace of the efforts in the past few years to achieve international detente, notably in relations between the USSR and the USA. But for the detente, the state of affairs would have been quite different, _-_-_
~^^1^^ L. I. Brezhnev, ``Our Course: Peace and Socialism", Moscow 1974, pp. 171--72.
186 and that is an incontestable fact. Had the October 1973 conflict broken out in an atmosphere of international tensions and aggravated relations between the USA and the Soviet Union, it could have been much more dangerous and could have assumed proportions jeopardising world peace. One thing is sure, and it is that it would have been impossible for the USSR and the USA to take their joint initiative on the Middle East, which was supported by other states, and which has resulted in the Security Council decisions that helped to bring about a ceasefire.The MIC's plans and acts are an expression of the ugly antipopular substance of imperialism. The MIC, fattening on arms contracts, seeks to keep the United States moving along the path of aggression and arbitrary acts, which amount to international piracy. As in the past quartercentury, the militaristic policy will not yield anything for the United States except more debacles and reverses, and a further deepening of the crisis of US imperialism, because ``militarism also bears within itself the seed of its own destruction".^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ F. Engels, Anti-D&hring, Moscow, 1975, p. 196.
[187] __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END]REQUEST TO READERS
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Please send all your comments to 21, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, USSR.
[188] ~ [189]BOGAT Y. Eternal Man. Reflections. Dialogues. Portraits
The well-known Soviet publicist deals with the spiritual makeup modern man and the problems stirring the minds of the young. He gives his own view of the spiritual values of the individual and mankind, and appeals to the great thinkers and artists of the past and the present.
He also makes a critical analysis of some reactionary ethical and philosophical ideas, notably, Nietzsche's, as the most blatant expression of anti-humanism.
``THE READER WILL FIND ROGAT'S HOOK SURPRISING, NOT TO SAY PARADOXICAL. INDEED, THE TITLE ITSELF SUGGESTS A PARADOX. WHAT COULD BE LESS ETERNAL THAN MAN? ALL THAT IS TRUE AND YET NOT QUITE, FOR THE CREATIONS OF MAN'S MIND AND THE POWER OF HIS FAITH IN THE TRIUMPH OF GOOD MAKE HIM ETERNAL. THE BOOK IS WRITTEN IN A STYLE THAT IS FREE AND UNCONSTRAINED, AND IS OBVIOUSLY POLEMICAL EVERYONE WHO READS IT WILL FIND SOMETHING HE WILL PARTICULARLY APPERECIATE, SOMETHING CONSONANT WITH HIS INDIVIDUAL VIEW OF THE WORLD.''
YUNOST
[190]AMBARTSUMOV Y. How Socialism Began. Russia under Lenin's Leadership. 1917--1923
Y. Ambartsumov, Candidate of History, the author of a number of books, is well kown for his articles on the development of the world socialist system, the social consequences of the scientific and technological revolution and the problems of the modern intelligentsia. They have been widely published in the Soviet press and many of them have been translated for publication abroad.
This book deals with the practical implementation and evolution of Lenin's ideas in the course of the socialist transformations in Russia.
The author takes issue with those Western Sovietologists who deny the historic significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the social transformations carried out in the Soviet Union, but regard Lenin's contribution to the development of social thought as genuinely historic.
[191]VARLAMOV K. Socialist Management: The Leninist Concept
The author, Professor and Doctor of Philosophy, draws on Lenin's vast theoretical legacy to consider a number of ideas which help to understand the shaping of a coherent system of views on the organisation and running of socialist society.
He shows that Lenin arrived at his concept of management by analysing the necessary objective and subjective prerequisites of socialism and making an all-round study of the needs of social development, while at the same time working to put the revolution into effect. Since then, the Communist and Workers' parties have continued to elaborate the management concept in theory and practice.
``THE BOOK SHOWS THE CPSU'S CREATIVE EFFORT IN DEVELOPING LENIN'S CONCEPT OF MANAGEMENT UNDER DEVELOPED SOCIALISM.''
PRAVDA
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